By Philip Keeley, Principal Systems Engineer at Aerohive Networks
Colleagues often ask why I still work for Aerohive - I have been known to move on when the technology elsewhere becomes more exciting - but the IoT (Internet of Things) has just made Aerohive more relevant than ever before.
There are many blogs and youtube clips explaining IoT, so no need for another one here. But I do want to focus on one particular area - security. Many of the resources on IoT brush over the physical tedium of actually connecting these myriad of devices to the network. The presumption is that it just works, so move onto how your internet enabled tennis racket will make your day better.
Yet, the physical connection cannot be overlooked. If one assumes Wi-Fi will be the main connection mechanism (not the only one - but a significant one) then the obvious connection-security is a pre-shared key - as certificates or user credentials - which will be tough to enter into a Wi-Fi lightbulb.
In the home space, everyone uses a single wireless network and populates the same pre-shared key and everything works. The concern here is the proliferation of the 'key' to your network. So what happens when you dispose of the Internet-enabled 'thing'? Do you also throw out your network security? Consider the wider concern as these Internet devices move into the office space. Will there be a single pre-shared key, which allows free-and-easy Internet access? Or will there be several different wireless networks for every type of device ... such as a WLAN for lightbulbs, a different one for Building Management, etc?
So why Aerohive? Enter Private Pre-Shared Key (PPSK), which gives Aerohive customers the ability to have thousands of different pre-shared keys on a single network with different connection profiles, including firewalls and VLANs. This makes Aerohive PPSK perfect for the Internet of things.
Take a single SSID with 'Private' Pre-Shared Keys - one group of keys for guest access or BYOD. Meanwhile, another group of keys could be for building management with a very controlled firewall policy, which only allows the building systems to make changes, rather than anyone else connected to the network. Lighting systems could be controlled by yet another group of keys, which may have their own firewall policy allowing corporate users to adjust the lighting in the meeting rooms, but not in the corridors. All of this is possible with Aerohive's PPSK (Private Pre Shared Key) technology.
So bring on the Internet of Things - Aerohive has a great solution!