Cloudpath Comes to Ruckus

Cloudpath have been offering wireless onboarding products since 2006 so in some ways are pioneers in this field. Back in the early years of wireless - security was very lapse and often wireless security was neglected and consisted mainly of Pre-Shared keys and open wireless networks. Cloudpath established early on that wireless security was very important and would continue to grow in importance with the continued growth of wireless networks in general. Fast forward to today and wireless security is vital and needs to be considered by everybody who operates a wireless network. The rise in wireless devices over the years has been massive and almost everybody owns and regularly onboards their device onto multiple wireless networks. In October last year Ruckus Wireless acquired Cloudpath to add to their portfolio of products and in my opinion this was a great move for them.

What does CloudPath do?

Cloudpath provides onboarding options for wireless devices onto networks. It simplifies the process by providing a single point of entry to the network and then allowing different types of users to authenticate onto the network accordingly. This "user journey" can be tailored by the network admin to keep the process as seamless as possible. During the onboarding process, the user is verified and the device is automatically configured to connect to the appropriate wireless network and a certificate is pushed out to it. Once the user/device is known to Cloudpath, the device will then automatically reconnect to the network in future with no action from the end user. Cloudpath can drop the client on to the required VLAN and apply ACLs to ensure that the required security is applied accordingly.

Why is this important?

On boarding wireless devices can be a real headache for network admins and can take up a lot of their time. Cloudpath assists by automating a large part of the process and making it easy for end user to undertake the process of getting their devices onto the network. This is especially ideal in organisation with a large user volume such as Education. Cloudpath is built using standards-based protocols and you can also use its inbuilt RADIUS server or your own existing server which can cut down on required deployment time. In short Cloudpath allows network admins to spend less time managing wireless devices and more time looking at other key areas of their network - sounds like a win to me!