As much as we wish it wasn’t true, the fact remains that the importance of cyber security is increasing. As AI and machine learning technologies grow in sophistication, so too do cyber security threats. They are becoming more intelligent, more targeted and substantially more damaging by the day.

When you factor in the exponential growth in attack points from mobile devices, the cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT) and an increasingly dispersed workforce, the possibility for businesses to be compromised increases further.

Forget about the size of your business or industry you operate in, if you have information that is confidential in nature, you have something of value for an opportunistic attacker. Because of this, every decision you make is in essence, a security decision – especially when considering the orientation of your network.

There’s no silver bullet to network security and every business will have unique circumstances that need to be addressed. In saying that, there are several questions you can ask yourself to help assess your overall security posture. In partnership with Aruba and with reference to The ClearPass family of solutions, our team here at Laminar came to rest on the following 3 questions that every business can leverage for better network security.

1. Do you have secure access for guest, BYOD and corporate devices?

First and foremost, do you currently enable access protocols for people connecting to your network? It’s imperative that there’s an access protocol in place for all people connecting to your network, whether it be staff, customers, guests or contractors. Consider it your first line of defence in a way, because once someone is inside the network, a host of opportunities open up if they’re there for the wrong reasons.

Secure access is a must, but not at the expense of productivity, so it also needs to be simple. Aruba ClearPass delivers three solutions that enable simple and safe secure access for whomever it is that requires your network.

• ClearPass Onboard – perfect for BYOD initiatives, Onboard automatically enables mobile devices for safe access to your network and offers people the ability to self-configure their devices.1
• ClearPass OnGuard – perfect for preventing access from potentially harmful devices, OnGuard assesses a device’s security posture prior to it connecting to the network to ensure it meets your security requirements.2
• ClearPass Guest – perfect for creating personalised guest access, ClearPass Guest lets you create a secure and unique web portal in your own branding.3

2. Do you have proactive control over access privileges?

To ensure best-practice network management and security, it’s important that you can proactively manage and control what particular people and devices have access to. You don’t want everything on your network to have access to everything – it’s important to restrict access where necessary because people should only have access to the resources they need.

Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager gives you exactly that, with every user, system and device on your network only being given access to the resources they require to execute their roles. How exactly? ClearPass Policy Manager authenticates every entity and then assigns the correct access privileges based on the entities requirements, nothing more, nothing less. Adjustable permissions include location, type of device, time of day and type of user to name a few.4

3. Do you have the full-spectrum of visibility into your network?

With the rise in attack points that we highlighted at the top of this blog, it’s a challenge for IT teams to stay on top of everything accessing your network which inevitably leads to blind spots. You need unencumbered visibility across the entirety of your network at all times in order to follow best practice. Ideally, you want each and every new device to be onboarded and given a particular policy prior to being granted access. How you ask?

Aruba ClearPass provides extensive discovery and profiling capabilities so your entire IT team, or whomever is handling your network can see who and what is connected. This visibility is delivered through one central dashboard that can be accessed from anywhere, at any time on any device.5 Additionally, ClearPass Device Insight uses machine learning to identify and profile a broader array of devices – perfect for your IoT environment.6

If you would like to know more about Aruba ClearPass or discuss any of the above questions, please contact Laminar on 1300 486 373 or sales@laminar.co.

1 Aruba, ClearPass Onboard: A ClearPass Policy Manager Application, Data Sheet – https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_ClearPass_Onboard.pdf

2 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development Company LP. ClearPass OnGuard: Enterprise-class endpoint protection, posture assessments and health checks, Data Sheet – https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_ClearPass_OnGuard.pdf

3 https://www.arubanetworks.com/en-au/products/security/network-access-control/secure-access/

4 Aruba, ClearPass Secure Network Access for Highly Secure Environments, Solution Brief – https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/so/SB_ClearPassSecureNetworkAccess.pdf

5 Aruba, ClearPass Secure Network Access for Highly Secure Environments, Solution Brief – https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/so/SB_ClearPassSecureNetworkAccess.pdf

6 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. ©2019. Visibility and Insight for Today’s IoT-Driven Networks: A roadmap to improved device security and compliance, Solution Brief – https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/so/SO_ClearPass-Device-Insight.pdf