BYOD evolves to BYON (bring your own network)
With almost 50 million Wi-Fi hot spots worldwide, Wi-Fi has never been more available. Trusted, secure Wi-Fi is less prevalent, and service providers know that they can differentiate themselves by helping enterprises to offer secure Wi-Fi.
But security solutions differ depending on the network environment, creating a huge challenge for Wi-Fi service providers. Wi-Fi equipment maker Xirrus is trying to simplify this by shifting control of security from the network to the device and the end user. The company’s EasyPass solution allows users to create a secure personal network that authenticates all their devices and isolates them from other users.
“For the first time, the user can dynamically create their own Wi-Fi network and control that,” said Bruce Miller, VP of product marketing at Xirrus. “It actually flips the paradigm around so that instead of connecting my devices to the Wi-Fi network I’m actually connecting the Wi-Fi network to my devices. … We’re able to dynamically program and change the network at the edge on the fly.”
EasyPass will be available as a free software update to Xirrus’s cloud-managed Wi-Fi customers. Customers who have on-premise controllers will be able to license the service on a per-user basis.
By eliminating shared passwords in settings like schools, hotels and conventions, EasyPass will be able to add a new layer of security to public Wi-Fi networks. Analyst Nolan Greene of IDC sees this as an attractive offering for small to medium-sized businesses, as well.
“The SMB space will also benefit from the relatively low-touch automated BYOD security features,” said Greene. “It could certainly be a boon to carriers/SPs who serve the SMB space as they could provide an easy-to-use user/guest onboarding portal, especially in retail where secure guest Wi-Fi is increasingly demanded.”
“Awareness of public Wi-Fi vulnerabilities is at an all-time high,” said Xirrus CEO Shane Buckley. “Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, every time we connect to public Wi-Fi we are putting our data at peril and are at risk of identify theft. Until now there hasn’t been a wireless solution to address this threat. With this introduction, Xirrus offers the first and only solution in the market that allows a secure private connection to be created within a public Wi-Fi network.”
Wi-Fi security is becoming more important to enterprises, but it is unclear whether service providers are ready to invest in solutions that offer added safety. In recent years, wireless carriers have been much less active than cable operators when it comes to Wi-Fi investment, and a recent report from ABI Research found that operators have been slow to upgrade their networks to support Hotspot 2.0.
