Make your wired internet connection secured with 802.1x

Using Wi-Fi to get connected with our home routers is the most widely used mode of getting connected to the Internet at home. To ensure that only you (and your family members) can connect to the router, you need to use a password that you have set up on the router. Also, all communication between your computer and the router is encrypted using the same pre-shared key, ensuring that no one outside your home network can eavesdrop in the traffic. A nifty protocol called WPA2 is behind all this. In fact, a smartphone or smart TV also uses the same mechanism, so that a random user cannot connect to the network and use its services.

But what about in offices and establishments, where using wired Ethernet is the most common way to get interconnected? Employees can hook their laptops to any open Ethernet ports in the office and get connected to the Office LAN. In fact, anyone who has physical access to these ports can connect, even if they are not employees. They may be interns, vendors or consultants, interviewees or even visitors! Since privacy of data and protection of intellectual property should be every office’s concern, ensuring that only authorized users can access its network is important.

It turns out that practices similar to Wi-Fi security can be applied to secure Ethernet connections as well. Wi-Fi security has mainly two parts,

So, an organization can apply 802.1x protocol for its Ethernet connections too and make sure only authenticated users are able to access their network. In fact, the similar infrastructure and settings that are used for Wi-Fi can be applied here too.

This is how things work in the background.

There are several configurable parameters in the 802.1x protocol to allow variations in the above. For example, hashing algorithms and encryption ciphers, multi-layered encryption and use of client certificates.

So now the question is, what does it take to implement the above. It turns out that Authenticator Switches are pretty cheap. And most organizations do have some authentication servers. If so, it would be a relatively small investment into so important a matter as security. What do you think?

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