Posted On 23 Oct 2021

Corporations are eager to keep visitors happy during their time at headquarters or anywhere on your premise. This means the wireless network must be extremely secure so they guests can connect to the Internet safely, while maintaining separate connection that doesn’t interfere with your business.

There are best practices in place for these enterprises that operate a guest wireless network. The basics include proper configurations and efficiencies to accommodate visitors while keeping the network secure and functional.

Separation
It’s a big mistake to allow visitors inside your business network. You spend a lot of time and money to design your network infrastructure and you put your mission-critical apps and services at risk if you open it up. Even if you lock data off from guests, interference and disruption can still occur. Imagine a guest with an unsecured device connecting to your wireless network and wreaking havoc. Aside from a potential threat or security breach, guests can use up valuable bandwidth and resources.

Hardware
The placement of routers and access points is important. A wireless network doesn’t always need to cover every nook and cranny of a campus. As long as it’s focused on areas where guests are likely to be such as lobbies, conference rooms, and even cafeterias may be the best locations for access points.

Access
Restrict access to prevent and block unauthorized use and plan for vulnerabilities from the stray site access that may contain malware or is shady.

Reduce Maximum Bandwidth
Guests probably aren’t going to need bandwidth for critical tasks, workflows, or applications, so they don’t need the fastest or most powerful network. Monitor bandwidth use to ensure there are no constraints on business network performance. You can install less powerful and cheaper hardware for guest networks and relax the standard.

Monitor your guest wireless network
Despite more relaxed standards for bandwidth and hardware, your company still needs to monitor the guest network for malware, hazardous data, and other vulnerabilities. If someone connects to the network with an unsecured device, the entire wireless network is put at risk, even when you have some form of segmentation in place. Any network performance monitoring (NPM) or network security tools you’ve deployed should be used to observe guest activity as well. Even if a guest unintentionally introduces a security hazard into your infrastructure, you have to deal with the consequences so make sure protocols and tools are being used.