What is 802.1x?

IEEE 802.1x is a standard for port-based network access control (PNAC) that determines how to manage authentication for endpoints to connect to each other on a LAN. It can be used to manage access for both wired and wireless networks. It is broadly utilized at both company headquarters and branch enterprise networks to ensure secure endpoint authentication and network access control.

How does the 802.1x protocol work?

• Initiation: The authentication or supplicant conveys a session initiation request. A supplicant conveys an EAP-response message to the authenticator, which summarizes the message and forwards it to the authentication server.
• Authentication: To validate several pieces of information, messages pass between the authentication server and the supplicant through the authenticator.
• Authorization: Once the credentials are verified, the authentication server informs the authenticator to provide the supplicant access to the port.
• Accounting: User and device details, session types, service details and session records are kept by RADIUS accounting.
• Termination: The termination of sessions is done by disconnecting the endpoint device or using management software.

Why is 802.1x authentication important?

802.1x is the golden standard of network authentication security. It can stop over-the-air theft attacks, and is more secure than Pre-Shared Key (PSK) environments common among personal networks.

Governments, individuals, and large organizations alike all require strong network security, beginning with network authentication and access control. Securing all aspects of online data and information has become essential with the increased reliance on technology, and as corporate networks continue to expand, data security continues to be one of the most critical issues for organizations to consider.

While no network is immune to attacks, an efficient and stable network security apparatus is important to protect client data. A strong network security system helps limit the risk of falling victim to data theft and can help to guarantee that shared data across an enterprise network is securely kept.

There are several factors to consider when distributing certificates to managed devices, making it a massive undertaking. These include public key infrastructure (PKI), integration, gateway setup, configuration settings, certificate enrollment, device authentication, and more. 

Thanks to the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP), administrators can quickly and easily enroll all managed devices for client certificates without any action from the end-user.

Here we will discuss what exactly the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) is and why network engineers should care about it. 

What Is The Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP)?

Digital certificate issuance in big enterprises is simplified, secured, and scalable with an open-source protocol called Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP).

SCEP servers utilize this protocol to give users a one-time password (OTP) through an asynchronous, out-of-band mechanism (OOB). After creating a key pair, the user submits the OTP and certificate signing request to the SCEP server for verification and signature. As soon as the certificate is ready, the user may request it from the SCEP server and then install it.

Digital certificate issuing was labor-intensive until the advent of SCEP and related protocols like Certificate Management Protocol and Certificate Management via CMS. SCEP is widely used in big organizations since it is supported by products from major vendors like Microsoft and Cisco.

After its creators left SCEP inactive in 2010, the project was dormant until it was revitalized in 2015. Apart from that, it is presently a draft that anybody may see as part of the work of the open-source community – the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Why Should Network Engineers Care About SCEP?

The public key infrastructure provides the most secure and user-friendly authentication and symmetric encryption solution for digital identities. Yet, the ambiguity and scale of certificate deployment for most businesses can challenge their already overworked network engineers.  

Manual deploying and maintaining certificates is tedious and error-prone. Whether an organization delivers a single certificate for a Wi-Fi router or holds several certifications across all networked devices and user identities, the whole process may take up to several hours. It leaves companies vulnerable to breaches, Man-in-the-Middle (MITM), and other forms of network disruption.

Certificates managed manually are more likely to be lost, overlooked, or expire without being replaced, putting businesses at high risk. Therefore, enterprises need the automated and well-organized certificate enrollment standard – the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) – due to the many risks associated with administering PKI certificates manually.

The significant benefits of the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) include:

• Hassle-free certificate issuing.
• Ensuring that certificates are correctly issued and configured across various devices.
• A fully automated procedure for the issuance of certificates. As a consequence of this, it involves very little to no human participation.
• A protocol that saves time, lowers operating expenses, and boosts productivity by enabling network engineers to concentrate on other duties rather than doing those chores themselves.

SCEP is a flexible solution that can meet all your network management requirements since it is compatible with most devices and server operating systems. These include Windows, Apple iOS, macOS, and Linux, as well as directory systems such as Active Directory.

We live in a world where cybercriminals can penetrate an alarming 93% of company networks. In fact, this trend looks set to continue as we move further into 2022 and beyond. 

Simply put, the cyber threat landscape is becoming increasingly dangerous for organizations and individuals today. For example, cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in their methods, shadow IT is widening the corporate attack surface, and network administration errors and misconfigurations are common. At the same time, Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS), where experienced cybercriminals sell access to tools and knowledge needed to execute an attack, is skyrocketing in popularity. The result? More hackers and more successful cyber-attacks. 

We need to strengthen our cybersecurity arsenal if we want to turn this situation around and effectively safeguard corporate systems. And that starts with people – the cybersecurity professionals who find unique solutions to keeping bad actors out. But unfortunately, the widening cybersecurity skills gap is making this extremely difficult. With this in mind, let’s look at the current state of the cybersecurity skills gap and what’s driving it. 

The Current State of the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

According to Fortinet’s 2022 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report, the cybersecurity skills gap contributed to a whopping 80% of data breaches last year. And these breaches had dire consequences, with 64% of organizations saying they lost revenue or faced fines and 38% reporting that breaches cost them more than a million dollars. 

Companies need skilled cybersecurity professionals now more than ever, but finding and keeping this talent is becoming increasingly difficult. For example, the same report found that 60% of organizations struggle to recruit cybersecurity talent and 52% struggle to retain qualified people, despite 76% of organizations indicating their board of directors now recommends increasing cybersecurity headcount. 

In simple words, organizations urgently need to close the cybersecurity skills gap to tighten their network security and keep pace with nefarious actors, but the gap continues to widen. For example, according to another report, the global cybersecurity workforce will need to grow by 65% to defend organizations’ critical assets effectively. 

At the same time, we continue to make immense strides in technological innovation across industries. Technologies that once seemed like science fiction, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, are now becoming commonplace. But while these technologies undoubtedly add enormous value, we’re not hiring and training the talent to ensure their security.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this situation is why precisely the cybersecurity industry is struggling to attract and retain talent. On paper, cybersecurity appears to be an attractive job prospect for fledgling tech enthusiasts or even IT workers who might want to transition roles into areas like network engineering, cyber intelligence, or security analysis. 

The appeal for people entering the field should be strong job security, a wide variety of opportunities, the ability to make a real impact, and decent pay (the average salary for a cybersecurity engineer in the US is $101,5481). And IT workers looking to transition into the role get much the same benefits but with a lower barrier to entry. For example, a coder is unlikely to struggle to wrap their heads around firewall types, network access control, and authentication security protocols like 802.1X. 

And yet people aren’t jumping at the chance to work in cybersecurity. Moreover, nearly one-third of the cybersecurity workforce plans to leave the field in the near future. But why? 

Factors Driving the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

Various factors are at play in why the cybersecurity industry faces talent shortages and a widening skills gap. So, let’s get into them. 

An Increasingly Demanding Skill Set and Entry Requirements

Due to the severity of today’s cyber threat landscape, cybersecurity professionals need a massive range of skills, and the list is growing yearly. Organizations increasingly want workers to have strong computer science, network engineering, and other technical skills in addition to computer forensics skills, problem-solving skills, and more. 

And more often than not, one of the key prerequisites to enter the field is a formal degree and an advanced professional certification like CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional).

But despite these requirements, getting cybersecurity skills while still in education is often challenging. For example, only 43% of the US’s top 50 computer science programs include security courses for undergraduates. In other words, we might be failing to attract budding IT professionals into cybersecurity before they choose their career paths. And when this next generation of IT workers opts for a different discipline, they find themselves without the needed certifications to transition into cybersecurity. 

Cybersecurity is Too Stressful

Sadly, stress is an industry epidemic in cybersecurity. Defending against advanced threats daily or even hourly can take a toll on mental health, which is reflected in the statistics. For example, according to Deep Instinct’s Voice of SecOps Report, 45% of C-suite and senior cybersecurity professionals have considered quitting the industry due to stress. And another study from the UK found that 42% of security leaders say they would be unlikely to recommend a job in cybersecurity due to the stress of the job.

A Thankless Job

Cybersecurity teams typically attract the most attention when something goes wrong (a successful breach). But, when they successfully defend the network, there’s silence. As a result, morale is often low in cybersecurity teams. If you’re going to be stressed, you should at least have your successes championed, right? Unfortunately, too many companies are failing to do this right now. 

Attitudes Toward Cybersecurity

Most companies recognize that network security and cybersecurity are essential in the modern world, but that doesn’t mean they have positive feelings toward them. Many high-ranking employees believe that cybersecurity stifles innovation or that cybersecurity teams are too heavy-handed regarding network access control. They don’t see all the attacks that cybersecurity teams prevent, so they assume the team is needlessly restricting their access to files and apps to exert power. 

Choosing a career in cybersecurity can seem unappealing if you’re anticipating being undervalued by your employer. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Unfortunately, it’s never been easier to become a black hat hacker. Advanced hacking tools are easy to come by, and knowledge sharing for things like phishing attacks, whaling attacks, and corporate account takeovers is rife. But the barrier to entry for the other side – the good guys who want to protect corporate networks is far higher. So companies that want to strengthen their network security need to take steps to overcome the cybersecurity skills gap and deploy advanced tools to help bridge the gap. 

What is TACACS+?

TACACS+ is a remote authentication protocol that allows a remote access server to communicate with an authentication server in order to validate a user’s access to a network device such as a wireless access point or wired switch (i.e. network device administration).

Cloud-Native TACACS+ by Portnox

Portnox TACACS+-as-a-Service is the first and only cloud-native solution for network device administration – authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA). TACACS+ by Portnox enables organizations to maintain transparent and secure administration of network devices by centralizing user authentication, access control policy enforcement, activity audit trails, and more – all from the cloud.

Authentication for Network Devices

Strengthen network device administration and improve organizational efficiency by authenticating users via Open LDAP, or Active Directory integration. Portnox supports Azure AD, Google Workspace, Microsoft AD, and OKTA.

Authorization & Access Control

Easily enforce network device access control policies that limit configuration changes to maintain administrative security. Dictate privilege levels, allowed services, the use of specific autocommands, custom attributes, and more.

Audit Trails & Accounting

Track user activity and attributes across network devices such as identities, start and stop times, executed commands, packet transfers, and much more to help maintain administrative transparency and streamline security audits.

Key TACACS+ Features from Portnox

System Architecture	Authentication Methods	Authorization Policies	Accounting Records	Integrations
Cloud-native	Azure AD	Privilege levels	User identities	SIEM
MS Azure-hosted	Google Workspace	Session timeout value	Start / stop times	Active Directory
No upgrades	Microsoft AD	Autocommands	Executed commands	RESTful API
No patches	OKTA	Allowed services	Packet transfers
Hardware agnostic	OpenLDAP	Custom attributes	US-ACII strings
…and more

Network Device Administration with Portnox

Determining the right network access control (NAC) security policy for your organization isn’t an easy task.

It’s often a balancing act between keeping your network secure and ensuring employees can access the systems they need to do their jobs.

Role-based access control (or RBAC) can be a good way of ensuring your network is protected. If you’ve been considering implementing RBAC in your organization but aren’t entirely sure of the benefits, this article will answer your questions.

What is role-based access control?

Role-based access control is a way of restricting access based on a user’s role within an organization. This means that users aren’t assigned permissions directly but are instead given roles that govern their levels of access. Depending on their job and responsibilities, a user may have one or more roles.

Let’s say, for example, you have a staff database on your network, which contains all your employees’ contact details and contractual information.

Everyone in the organization may have access to edit their own personal details. Managers may have access to edit their team’s information, but no one else’s. Your HR team may have full access to the database to view and edit everyone’s data.

RBAC works on the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP). This means users have the minimal level of access needed to carry out their job.

RBAC isn’t the only access control method available. There are other options you can consider, like attribute-based access control (ABAC), policy-based access control (PBAC) and access control lists (ACL). However, role-based access control is one of the most effective ways of not only keeping networks secure but improving organizational efficiency.

A study by NIST has shown that role-based access control addresses most of the needs of government and commercial organizations.

Why is role-based access control so important when it comes to network security?

Networks are more susceptible to security breaches than ever before. People working from home and the introduction of BYOD policies mean more endpoints that can be compromised.

In fact, according to IBM, it’s estimated that data breaches in 2021 cost businesses an average of $4.24 million.

With this in mind, it’s essential to ensure networks stay safe. Here’s how role-based access control can provide security for businesses large and small.

I. It makes it easy to ensure networks are secure

Setting up permissions for networks is relatively straightforward. However, as people start, leave, and move around organizations, permissions can become less efficient. Users may end up with access to systems they no longer need.

RBAC means IT departments can effectively manage what access people have with a click of a button.

Let’s go back to the example of the staff database above and say that a new staff member has joined the HR team. Rather than setting access at a user level, you can add them into the ‘HR’ role so they can have full access to the system.

A few years later, let’s say the staff member moves into the sales team, meaning they no longer need full access to the staff database. Rather than changing every single point of access they have, it’s just a case of adding them into the ‘sales’ role instead.

II. It reduces the attack surface

It’s estimated that one in four data breaches result from human error. With RBAC, if a member of staff causes an accidental (or intentional) data breach, there will be less impact.

Let’s say someone is a victim of a phishing attempt, and a hacker obtains their login details. The hacker will only be able to access the information that the member of staff has through the roles they have been allocated.

This means even if a data breach occurs, most of your information will still be safe.

III. It eliminates the risk of ‘insider threats’

Disgruntled employees can often try and settle the score by leaking confidential data or deleting important information. Earlier this year, an IT technician in the UK was jailed for 21 months for wiping data from the school he was formerly employed at after being fired.

As role-based access control gives just enough access to ensure staff can carry out their jobs, it minimizes the risk of users causing intentional harm to your networks.

Similarly, if you work with any third parties, you can use RBAC to assign them pre-defined roles and limit what they can view or edit. Once you stop working with them, you can quickly remove their permissions.

IV. It can quickly scale and adapt

As RBAC deals with overarching roles rather than individual permissions, it can grow as an organization’s IT requirements do.

Let’s say you acquire a new application for your organization. Role-based access control makes it easy to create new permissions as well as set different levels of permissions quickly. As a result, you can ensure any new hardware or software stays secure and that the right people have access.

V. It can ensure you stay compliant

Some industries, like healthcare and financial services, are heavily regulated and have stringent compliance regulations in place. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) states that only certain people should be allowed access to specific systems.

Role-based access controls can ensure that organizations in these industries do what is required of them, minimizing the risk of security breaches as well as fines for willful violations of the law.

How Portnox can help with your RBAC requirements

Role-based access control can be an extremely efficient way of ensuring network security and can be as top-level or granular as your organization demands. The key is developing a solid strategy before creating and assigning roles.

Which parts of your network need access control, which departments need permissions, and how will you assign people to the right roles?

If you need extra support keeping your network safe, Portnox is here to provide you with peace of mind. Our NAC security solutions come with role-based authentication and access policies to ensure the right people can access your network at the right time.

Contact our team today to find out more.