Is your faculty and staff at your school begging you for wifi or wireless internet access in the classroom? You have heard of BYOB, but have you now heard the term BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)?
Did you walk around your school to find out that some teachers and staff that are smart enough to know the basics of wireless networking plug in one of their spare home Linksys or Netgear access points just to get SOME sort of wireless access in their classroom?
I am sure you have explained all the horrible things that may happen and network security breaches that may occur once there are "rouge" access points on the network. Something simple, but annoying may happen such as overloading your network switch, creating a crash and having to call your overworked IT department, just to have them yell at you for crashing the system! Or the worst case scenario, which could be your students' records exposed which may include addresses, social security numbers, health information, grades, etc.
Sure they can, and they will, it is just a matter of time. This reminds me of the movie WarGames with Matthew Broderick from the early 80's when he "dialed" into the school computer and changed all his grades with his state of the art 2400 baud modem...Remember that scene? Was it really possible then? Is it really possible now?
Do you think that a $39.99 device with a "firewall" sold at your local electronics store can really stop this? Ever wonder why such an important piece of technology only costs $39.99? Let's say for a second it could (even though it can't). You would need hundreds of these cheap little access points all over your network, and worse, someone has to manage them...one by one! Ouch!
I am just going to touch upon a few key points that will probably keep you up at night. What inexperienced IT staff don't realize, at first, is each access point needs to be programmed, installed, and maintained. That would mean that every time you want to make a change, you would have to log into that access point (in most cases physically, so good luck crawling in the ceilings built 50 years ago, and logging into hundreds of units one at a time) to make your changes. Multiply that by each building in your district...no way.
In addition to the programming, these low cost access points do not have nearly the range as more modern, powerful, and secure BlueSocket wireless access points have. You would probably need 4 of these substandard access points to one enterprise wireless access point.
Then there is power... What are you going to do? Get an electrician to run outlets everywhere in ceilings at the
Hackers, thieves, and yes, even STUDENTS are very smart these days, and just a few searches on YouTube can yield you a few simple ways to hack into a network. Where would the best line of defense be on a network? Why right at the easiest to access and most remote point- right at the AP itself. The best practice is to not even let anyone authenticate to the network. Block them first, right at the access point. If they can't even get on the network, intruders certainly can't do anything, and will hopefully move on to a less secure and stable network to attack.
I am a father of 2 elementary school students, 9 and 7 years old. It scares the living daylights out of me when I think of how uneducated (no pun intended) and nieve school boards are to not making secure school WiFi a priority, no matter the cost.