Secure Telecommuter AP: Protect Remote Users

Enterprises rightly invest time and effort in securing the corporate network, whether users are connecting through wires or wireless links. On the wireless side, Meru networks provides the industry's strongest security system, with multiple layers of defense that protect against attacks launched within or around an enterprise campus. However, most of these defense layers only apply within the enterprise premises. Once users leave for the day or on a business trip, they leave the confines of the protected network and enter the unknown. There, they and their laptops or other devices may be exposed to an onslaught of attacks.

Wireless networks have extended mobile computing beyond the enterprise walls, allowing employees to be productive from homes, hotel rooms or coffee shops. However, this productivity often comes at the price of security: the public wireless networks at hotspots, airports and convention centers do not require per-user encryption for most tasks, allowing multiple opportunities for interception of traffic and insertion of malware. The same apples to users' home networks, which are often left open or reliant on outdated security technologies. Many employees are tempted by open access points and peer-to-peer wireless networks that put the security of remote clients at even greater risk.

Many users attempt to connect to networks
that appear to offer wireless access.

The Meru Secure Telecommuter Access Point removes this avenue of exposure, providing remote users with the same level of security that they get in the corporate network. An extension of the enterprise network, it offers remote users all the services that would be available within the enterprise and enforces the same security policies. Regardless of whether users are remote or on the corporate campus, they are assured secure network access to critical enterprise resources.

In addition, the Telecommuter Access Point can impose even more stringent security on remote users, for example preventing them from accessing specific resources. To protect against threats to remote wired networks or traffic on the public Internet, the Secure Telecommuter AP sends all data to the enterprise controller via an encrypted tunnel.

By bringing the enterprise wireless network directly to the remote user, security officers are able to leverage wireless network lockdown procedures on laptops and other remote clients. Remote users are prevented from accidentally connecting to insecure networks that could expose sensitive data or give attackers a route to the user's machine. And unlike laptop-based VPNs, the Telecommuter AP extends protection to 802.11 phones and other devices.