With Genians, the university simplified various authentication methods to provide advanced secure network access for users and devices across their satellite campuses
Challenges
This university has provided many distance-learning courses for more than 180,000 students in South Korea since 1972. The school is comprised of 13 campuses and 32 learning centers across the country. With many students accessing the university’s network from multiple remote sites, a number of security challenges needed to be overcome: first there was the need for an effective user authentication process; second, network management visibility for all remote sites had to be maintained; and finally, access control was required for a wide range of users and device types.
The university sought a comprehensive NAC solution to address the following challenges in particular:
- Lack of network visibility across all campus environments
- Too much management overhead required for user authentication to successfully manage over 1 million student records on a daily basis
- The difficulty of checking out the security posture of every single device accessing the network during pre/post-admission process in real-time
- Inefficient IP address management for known/unknown users and devices
Solutions
Genians enables the university to provide secure user authentication, while also accommodating BYOD and Guest access with better IP address management.
- Improves network visibility for all endpoint devices across remote sites by Genians non-disruptive sensing technology
- Instantly identifies and classifies any new, unknown, and rogue devices
- Consolidates multiple authentication methods through Genian NAC by integrating seamlessly with the university intranet
- Manages IP addresses efficiently using built-in DHCP and IPAM features
- Checks security posture of all university-owned Windows machines in real-time and enforces the university-required software stack should it be missing
- Blocks any unknown and rogue devices accessing via wired and wireless networks
- Quarantines and remediates non-compliant or compromised devices
Summary
Genians provided the university with centralized and comprehensive user authentication, BYOD, and Guest access control processes as well as IP address management with enhanced network visibility for their entire campus complex without disturbing the existing network infrastructure. The university can now ensure that all users and devices are operating at the highest compliance levels in real-time. Additionally, the university is now able to maximize intranet usage and reduce operating costs by integrating with Genian’s NAC solution.