WiFi Pain? It's time for a Haptic Wireless Health Check

Why on earth would you want to spend money looking at your WiFi?!......

....... Well... for quite a few reasons actually... I'd like to cover some of the crucial bits that you need to consider:

You’ve spent £30k on a wireless network in 2017, the scars from securing approval on funding for the project have just about faded and you are caught up in the rest of your daily trials and tribulations… and the WiFi network is working ok, right?

Are all your AP’s online or even physically there?
You would be amazed how many times I’ve found equipment has gone walking...
Are users cursing YOU, the entire IT industry & smashing mice because they’ve got poor connectivity?
Yes, some users like to ride the "blame IT" game to avoid work, but I've found an entire departments' productivity being crippled due to poor connectivity and no one in IT or Operations has been made aware because end-users assumed that “that’s just the way it is”.
Is your firmware up to date?
I’ll spare you the preaching about patches and securing vulnerabilities, but let's face it - vendors aren’t developing upgrades for fun. If they’re not applied, is your system a) secure, b) optimised, c) supported?
Are you aware of the unauthorised networks? On several occasions, I've seen users deciding that they want their own network (either to bypass filtering or because they feel they will get better coverage), as such they’ve jacked-in their own AP and are leaving a glaring hole for ne'er-do-wells to dive into your business through the front door. Roll out the red carpet.
Is your system setup for your RF environment or just set to “Default”?
Time and time again, I see Channelisation that’s not just poorly designed, but in some cases, crippling performance of systems - 40Mhz in 2.4Ghz, 180Mhz in 5Ghz, third party networks taking out swaths of spectrum through mis-configuration. I've seen it all and none of it makes your system work better. Every location is unique and default settings are designed for a generic average system - but who wants to be “average”?
Have the device types and quantities changed since the WiFi was deployed? Ah... the steady march of technological progress... When I was a lad, you were grateful to have the dial up! Yet in the last 3 years I’ve gone from having 2 WiFi devices on me to at least 5. Throw into the mix that users are increasingly hot-desking and accessing cloud based resource and suddenly there are a lot of changes since that cutting edge solution was installed back in 2017. Now that’s not to say that your current setup can't cut the mustard, but it might need some tweaking or a technical "face-lift" to make sure it’s doing the job to meet your current (and no doubt growing) business needs.
Are you getting the most out of it?
So you had a slick sales pitch back when looking at systems and thought that x,y or z feature looked cool and you’d definitely implement it once you’d got it up and running, but let’s just set WPA2/PSK for now… that was 3 years ago. We get it- you’re busy and if it works, why fix it? Well you might find there are easy changes that could be made to improve performance, security and user experience.

These are just a handful of the myriad of reasons why it’s worth looking at a Wireless Health Check & Audit. Ultimately, the number of wireless devices you are supporting isn’t going to decrease as time moves on so why wouldn’t you give your network a bit of TLC & an MOT to make sure it’s doing the business for you?

Since every location, network and customer is unique, we tailor our services to make sure that we are looking into and working with you on the areas that matter most to you.

Haptic Networks offers both remote and onsite services and will provide you with a comprehensive report with clear recommendations for improvement and justification for these upgrades. If you’d prefer us to implement, we can provide you an end-to-end solution.

You can contact me here if you'd like to know more about how we can help

Cheers,

Mark

5 ways to help prevent a PCI compliance audit failure...

Cybercrime and identity fraud are big business…worldwide.

If your organisation processes credit/payment card information it becomes your duty to protect their data. In the wake of the recent prolific UK Bank hacks it demonstrates that even those with high security focus can be caught short.

It is essential for companies that accept and process payment cards to be compliant with the PCI Council’s latest payment card industry (PCI DSS) compliance requirements.

Working with organisations as varied as banks, legal firms, gambling companies and council offices has given us a wide experience of the various different ways you could possibly fail a PCI compliance audit.

Here are the 5 ways you can help avoid one…

1.Physical or Primary Security. A relatively lo-tech starter, your company must secure the environment where payment card information is kept. For example, in order to gain access every single entry point, someone must be required to ID themselves through at least one if not multiple physical barriers, a badge-in requirement, a key, or an admin area that is constantly manned. CCTV systems are also a basic requirement of the PCI Council (ask us about our HD IP CCTV solutions)

2. Network security. Your company needs to have a secure network that is able to protect customers’ data. Sadly a firewall alone won’t cut it, it’s important to have strong ACLs (access control lists) on all network devices to prevent breaches by would-be hackers. An additional level of security – like a separate area inside your network (a DMZ or similar structure) – would create a secondary level of access control to ensure that connections to internal sources are legitimate and access is restricted to rogue clients.

Haptic provide world leading, fully patented network security scanners and WiFi devices that give your company full visibility on any attempted rogue activity, whilst giving you the ability to ‘in-house’ your PCI Audit procedure.

3.Your processes. Focused heavily on policies and procedures achieving PCI compliance, is more than just physical/tech related your company must draft a detailed Information Security Policy this should contain documentation for antivirus, network configurations, physical security etc. Ultimately this should be signed off by IT Director, Network Manager Security Officer) This can appear daunting, however the majority is common sense and good organisation.

4. Encrypting Data. The PCI audit focuses heavily on the encryption for credit card data as it moves around your organisation. The PCI Council requires the use of high levels of encryption; these are incredibly valuable as they require a complex decryption protocol or methodology, usually a decryption key that must be used by the authorised party to receive the credit card data.

5.Talk to us. Aside from being able to assist with your pursuit of PCI Compliance, we can consult and demonstrate the tools and technology we deploy to not only aid your PCI audit but also to give you a fully protected wired and wireless network.

Give us a nudge, we’d be happy to tell you more.

Here are the 5 ways you can help avoid one…

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