Easy access 4 ways—with HP Unified Access
Unified access layer for wired and wireless LAN with HP - Part 11
By Gladys Alegre-Kimura, Global Product Marketing Manager, HP Networking
Rebecca is able to accomplish starting a video effortlessly from her corporate phone because of HP’s unified access and policy enforcement delivered through HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC) across HP wired and wireless networks. It may not seem like a big deal but there are underlying requirements for organizations that would like to offer flexibility for employee collaborations yet in a secure fashion. Your organization must determine the right identity based access strategy for devices, whether employer or employee owned, and unified policy for users, whether users are employees or corporate guests. Solutions should allow for the authentication of users (guest or employees) and the identification of devices so that appropriate policies can be applied.
Access strategy: user, device and type
Consider an employee-owned mobile device where it is possible that you would want to provide email and Internet access to that user when using the corporate wireless network. Granting access to other network services may pose potential security risks especially when the device may not have the appropriate security applications that you have deemed necessary installed. If it was an employer-owned device (whether a tablet or PC), you may want to grant it access to more network services like video conferencing or secured business applications. Policies with the appropriate level of access are necessary. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:
User type | Device type | Policy |
Guest | Mobile device (tablet or smart phone) | Internet only |
Guest | PC (notebook or desktop) | Internet only |
Employee | Employee owned mobile device (tablet or smart phone) | Internet and email |
Employee | Employer owned mobile device (tablet or smart phone) | Internet, email and a subset apps/services accessible to that user |
Employee | PC (notebook or desktop) | Internet, email and all apps/services |
4 ways HP’s unified access solution enables access
- Authenticate users onto the network with IMC’s User Access Manager, which can provide single sign on authentication for Windows-based PCs and portal authentication for mobile devices.
- Identify the device type—PC, tablet or smartphone—through a self-registration portal and device fingerprinting.
- Define policies for devices and users within IMC which can range from limiting bandwidth to guest users to granting access to network services on specific devices.
- Apply policies to the appropriate infrastructure via IMC so that the network behaves as desired.
These four capabilities allow your organization to execute on a unified access and policy strategy granting users and their devices appropriate level of access to the network. Best yet, when an employee who has access to video services pulls out an employer-owned device, that person can start video without having to sign into the portal every time. How? Through a combination of single-sign-on authentication using the employee’s usual username and password combination, or something more sophisticated like using a PKI infrastructure with secure certificates, making this a flexible solution you can adapt to your organization’s security policy.
It’s nice to have solutions like unified access and policy for wired and wireless networks enabling you to be as productive as possible, even when life gets in the way.
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