Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Deploying Cisco WIPS - Overlay vs Integrated

When making choices about security for your wireless network, there are some ups and downs about everything you are going to have as options.

     When deploying a Wireless Intrusion Prevention System, you should look into the abilities of both types of deployments to see which one is going to work for your environment.

     Overlay WIPS- an overlay deployment is specifically a whole different set of access points designated to intrusion prevention only. In other words, after you have surveyed and designed the wireless coverage for client devices to access your network, you will go back to your floor plans and design a WIPS network that consist of a totally different set of access points deployed within the same area as the wireless network.

     These WIPS access points will be deployed in monitor mode, then you will check the enhanced WIPS engine check box and choose WIPS in monitor mode optimization. You will then click save and you will be prompted to reboot the access point.

     ***Take note that you will have to disable the radio and admin status of the radio before configuring these settings. After you are done and the access point comes back up, you will need to enable both the radio and admin status.

     The overlay option of deployment places the WIPS access points in a full time spectrum scan so that all channels can be scan on a continuous basis.

     The Integrated option only scans part time, and that is only in between transmissions of data. If the access point is in use, the WIPS scan is not working and the network has a level of vulnerability. Also, when the access point is scanning in between transmissions, it doesn't always have a chance to scan all channels. It will only get through a few channels before it comes back to service client data again.

     ***Note  Integrated is also often referred to as a WIPS deployment that controls its WIPS access points and its infrastructure access points all on the same controller. Many WIPS deployments (especially those for a large campus) will have separate controllers for each deployment. One for the infrastructure and one for the WIPS deployment. This is the most expensive option but is also the best approach to utilizing WIPS.

I've provided a Cisco link to the configuration of WIPS below:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/mse/3350/7-0MR1/wIPS/configuration/guide/wIPS_70MR1/msecg7x_ch6_wIPS.html

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