Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives

Re: Consensus About Open Guest Access


From: Sam Hooker <samuel.hooker () UVM EDU>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:30:32 -0400


On 20120612 14:01 , Jim Pardonek wrote:
Ok so I'm hijacking my own email thread.  Those of you that host
conferences, how do you handle guest WLAN access for the conference
attendees and presenters?  I've checked the guest access pages from
several edu's but they only mention sponsored guest access and really
don't address a conference. 

UVM uses a sponsored-access model[1], and users responsible for
provisioning access for conference attendees are granted access to a
batch-creation utility built around the spreadsheet format used by our
Conference and Events Services group. They input their existing list of
attendees, the system provisions accounts/generates passwords, and hands
them back a CSV suitable for framing. Er, mail-merging.

Yes, this means that the sponsor has access to the guests' credentials
in plaintext, but this was deemed an acceptable compromise, given the
ephemeral nature of these credentials, and the extremely limited scope
of their access to institutional resources.


Cheers,

-sth

http://www.uvm.edu/it/wireless/?Page=guestnet.html

--
Sam Hooker | samuel.hooker () uvm edu
Systems Architecture and Administration
Enterprise Technology Services
The University of Vermont

We are in the process of separating our
medical schools from our hospital.  They have had their own methods of
supplying guest access which in my view is not very secure nor does it
make anyone accountable for usage.  We struggle with having a set of
conference IDs that we recycle and change the passwords on after every
conference.  We were thinking that since we have to address this at our
med schools, we may want to look at our conference guest access for the
whole university.
 
Thanks,
 
Jim

 
*James Pardonek, CISSP, CEH*
*Information Security Officer**
Loyola University Chicago 
**1032 W. Sheridan Road | Chicago, IL  60660
**
(**: (773) 508-6086
<mailto:508-6086 () purduecal edu><mailto:508-6086 () purduecal edu>*
"Routen, Nathan" <NRouten () MAIL TWU EDU> 6/11/2012 1:30 PM >>>
Here is one specific example to consider..

Any traffic that remains within the University's private network does
not need to be CALEA compliant as it falls within the "Private Network"
exception.  However, communication traffic that travels to the Public
Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) or the Public Internet does have a CALEA
requirement.  At that point, it must be decided who has the CALEA
obligation.  If the University acts as its own ISP, I would assume that
they have the obligation.  Also, if the University implements dynamic IP
addresses for local end points it would need to provide the end user
associated with that dynamic address for an authorized interception.

As you have probably noticed, determining whether an entity needs to be
CALEA compliant is not a simple question.  I suggest that you pose the
question to your legal resources before initiating any action.

Nate

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Julian Y Koh
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2012 1:22 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Consensus About Open Guest Access

On Mon Jun 11 2012 13:10:36 Central Time, Roger A Safian wrote:

We have this.  Guest wireless is open, you need to enter your email,
name, etc. and you get 24 hours of access.  We’ve only been doing it for
a few months and so far we have had no issues with several thousand users.

8300+ unique devices since March 28, to be a little more specific.  :)

There are obviously a lot of dips and peaks in some of our data, but
we're averaging over 260 unique registrations every day, with a max just
under 500 a couple of times. 


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