How Does RADIUS Improve WiFi Security?

You may be wondering, how does RADIUS improve WiFi security? But, before we get to that, let’s discuss what could potentially be your current WiFi password dissemination practices. Is your WiFi password written up on the conference room whiteboard? Or, are you using a shared passphrase that is emailed out? Perhaps you have a lot of people coming and going from your organization, which forces you to constantly hand out the WiFi password on sticky notes or scraps of paper.

Sure, these practices are convenient, but they’re not all that secure. The problem with the aforementioned methods is that it makes it far too easy for an intruder to jump on to the WiFi network and put your organization at risk. So, how can you protect your network? Let’s take a look at RADIUS.

What is RADIUS?

At its most basic, RADIUS is an acronym that stands for Remote Authentication Dial In User Service. The “Dial In” part of the name shows RADIUS’s age (it has been around since 1991). Today, however, RADIUS is widely used to authenticate and authorize users to remote WiFi networks. This process is generally completed with the WPA2 enterprise protocol on wireless access points (WAPs). But, it isn’t just remote network access that IT organizations are looking to leverage RADIUS for. When RADIUS is applied to on-prem networks that users utilize daily, the security of that network is also increased.

For organizations looking to leverage RADIUS, there are a good number of options available including: FreeRADIUS, Microsoft^® NPS, Cisco ISA, RADIUS-as-a-Service, and many others.

RADIUS Improves WiFi Security

RADIUS pairs with directory services solutions like Microsoft Active Directory^® (MAD or AD) and / or OpenLDAP™ to fortify security for wireless networks. But how? In order to access a wireless network secured by RADIUS, the user must provide their own unique, core set of credentials. Essentially, the same credentials they use to log in to their work system are the ones they will use to log in to the network. These credentials move from a supplicant on the user’s desktop or laptop to (Read more...)

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