Improving Your Wireless Network and Security

In today’s world of remote work, network security has never been more important. There are many factors to securing your network internally and even more once we start talking about remote workers. There are several issues that can arise when allowing a remote system to access your business network. Many times, the solution for connectivity is VPN (Virtual Private Network) or RDP (Remote Desktop). These solutions are not bad, however, if not set up properly, can lead to others with hacking experience to view and piggyback onto these connections.

This was the case at a mid-size business in which a non-secure VPN and RDP sessions were handed out to the staff to remote into from their home offices. “We were called upon to come up with solutions to secure these connections using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security),” explained Archie Aragon, Professional Services Network Engineer with Altura. “Whichever solution you apply please be aware that it is very important to allow your security devices to use all of their capabilities. In the case of the company mentioned above, they had purchased the correct product, but as Covid-19 became more prevalent and they needed to send their staff home to work, they rushed to implement a NON-secure work solution which led to extra amounts of spam and malware attacks from the world ‘wild’ web.”

Considering how COVID-19 has had a drastic impact on public safety, transportation, healthcare, education, and public services for both employees and citizens, state and local government agencies continue to implement pandemic response strategies. Many have enabled remote and extended connectivity to drive business continuity in unique ways. By extending the functionality of your wireless network, you can support a range of use cases within your municipality including:

• Rapid outdoor network extension solutions for onboarding new or temporary networks
• Securing teleworker solutions with better performance and centralized IT management
• Cloud-driven solutions that radically simplify remote deployments and operations of your wired and wireless infrastructure
• Enhanced security with VPN tunnels, stateful firewalls, encryption and PPSKs
• WAN connectivity options (broadband, cellular, private WAN) with intelligent traffic management
• AI and ML powered analytics to proactively monitor and optimize network health for all fixed or temporary locations

Extreme Networks has been recognized as a leader in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure for the third consecutive year. Altura’s Professional Services Team is certified in both sales and support for Extreme Networks’ most advanced and cost-effective solutions:

LEADING WI-FI 6

High efficiency, high capacity Wi-Fi that utilizes the latest technologies to optimize and protect bandwidth in all environments

CLOUD-DRIVEN

Combine the leading Wi-Fi hardware with next-generation Extreme cloud management to simplify every aspect of IT operations from deployment to support

MACHINE LEARNING

Make the network work for you instead of the other way around with self-driving Wi-Fi powered by millions of actionable insights to continually adapt and adjust performance.

To learn how Altura and Extreme Networks can simplify and secure your networking please contact an Altura Account Manager today!