Protecting New and Existing AP Installations from Wi-Fi Hacking

Executive Summary

Businesses of all types and across all industries are facing increased pressure from customers, vendors, and even employees to offer secure and fast wireless access. Although offering Wi-Fi is vital, it remains vulnerable to wireless threats. Networks may unknowingly allow client connections to a malicious access point (AP), putting all endpoints at risk. Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (WIPS) technology helps APs intelligently challenge Wi-Fi attackers while maintaining performance.

In this second iteration of testing, WatchGuard Technologies engaged Miercom to competitively assess its APs against similar devices from Aruba, Cisco Meraki, Ruckus and Ubiquiti to understand how its WIPS automation compares. WIPS is designed to address Wi-Fi security threats such as rogue APs, rogue clients, neighbor APs, ad-hoc networks, APs with spoofed SSIDs and misconfigured APs.

We found WatchGuard’s Wi-Fi security solution (either AP325 or AP125 Overlay managed by the Wi-Fi Cloud) is the only vendor on the market to offer exceptional security against all Wi-Fi threat categories, supporting automatic detection and prevention where other vendors did not. The following key findings highlight our testing observations.

Key Findings:

• Only vendor to automatically detect and prevent the six known Wi-Fi threat types simultaneously, while providing full client throughput performance
• WatchGuard APs provide cost-effective and far superior security and speed to detect in WIPS overlay mode on Wi-Fi networks with incumbent other third-party APs
• Only vendor to fully protect from complex spoofed AP and client exploits

Miercom has independently observed the performance of the WatchGuard Technologies AP325 Cloud-Managed Wi-Fi solution and awards the Miercom Certified Secureaccreditation in recognition of its superior performance in the competitive security assessment against similar Wireless Intrusion Prevention System products.

Robert Smithers, CEO
Miercom

“WatchGuard’s Wi-Fi security solutions are the most powerful and easy-to-use on the market,” said Alberto Oliveira, head of security services at TrueSec. “The APs are incredibly simple to configure, deploy and monitor, and offer industry-leading wireless security. Their WIPS capabilities enable customers with Trusted Wireless Environments, while the performance and management features deliver high-quality Wi-Fi access. Offering this type of all-in-one secure Wi-Fi system is a major competitive differentiator for our business, and our customers love it.”