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5 Best Practices for Fast, Secure Wi-Fi on K-12 Campuses

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When I was a high school student, bringing a smartphone into classrooms was not permitted. If you were caught with any electronic device, it would be confiscated. Pronto.

In this new digital era, schools are embracing this transformation everywhere. Classrooms are changing, with Wi-Fi being the primary form of internet access. Students, faculty and guests also use more than one device at a time, including laptops, tablets, wearables and smartphones. As the number of devices grow, it becomes critical to plan your K-12 networks effectively and future-proof it to be able to implement newer and safer technology.

If you’re expanding, upgrading or building a secure wireless network for K-12 campus or districts, review these five helpful best practices.

Plan for density

Secure Wi-Fi networks are often planned based on coverage. If the wireless signal simply covers a classroom it does not signify that it can actually handle the device density in that room. With students and faculty using multiple devices, the number of devices connected to a particular wireless access point increases. Ensure that you are prepared for max traffic density in your classroom — and across the entire campus.

How? As a first approach, ensure you have sufficient coverage and layer this with density. Use a site survey tool like the SonicWall WiFi Planner to make this process easier to visualize. Next, estimate where you find max device density, peak traffic and plan your Wi-Fi deployment around this.

Go cloud

More applications and functions are moving to the cloud (or are likely already there). For K-12 schools untethering Wi-Fi from their wireless controller or firewalls, the cloud offers powerful infrastructure and applications to simplify management and security.

By going this route, K-12 districts and schools have the flexibility to manage wireless security solutions from the cloud, scale limitlessly and also drive down TCO.

How? Transition to a cloud-managed wireless solution. The SonicWall wireless solution can be managed by the WiFi Cloud Manager, which is a scalable, centralized Wi-Fi network management system, simplifying wireless access, control and troubleshooting capabilities across networks of any size or region.

Accessible through SonicWall Capture Security Center (CSC), WiFi Cloud Manager unifies multiple tenants, locations and zones while simultaneously supporting tens of thousands of SonicWave wireless access points.

Single-pane-of-glass management

Managing multiple management dashboards is challenging as there is a high risk of things falling through the cracks. To avoid this and to streamline the process it is essential to have a single-pane-of-glass management system with real-time analytics to capture threats and abnormalities in your network. This type of management saves you time and helps you become proactive rather than reactive.

How? Empower yourself with the right management solution to govern your entire network security ecosystem from a single dashboard. Capture Security Center is a scalable cloud-based security management system that’s a built-in, ready-to-use component of your SonicWall product or service.

Capture Security Center features single sign-on (SSO) and single-pane-of-glass management. It integrates the functionality of the Capture Cloud Platform to deliver robust security management, analytics and real-time threat intelligence for your entire portfolio of network, email, mobile and cloud security resources.

Enable content filtering

Wi-Fi is an easy gateway for malicious attacks. It must be protected with the right encryption and security mechanisms. Create granular policies to ensure that students are protected against malicious and non-reputable websites.

How? Ensure that you enable content filtering on your network. SonicWall provides a Content Filtering Service (CFS) that compares requested sites against a massive database in the cloud containing millions of rated URLs, IP addresses and domains. It provides administrators with the tools to create and apply policies that allow or deny access to sites based on individual or group identity, or by time of day, for over 50 pre-defined categories.

Future-proof with the latest technology

Ensure that you deploy the latest wireless technology in your schools. Future-proofing secure Wi-Fi is the best way to ensure that you get your money’s worth in the long term while providing the best user experience.

How? This does not mean you have to rip and replace your entire existing network. It could be a gradual approach, wherein you upgrade only critical units based on your needs. Build your network on the latest certified wireless standard: 802.11ac wave 2. Future-proof with wireless access points that are 802.11ac Wave 2-capable.

Adhering to these best practices will make your WiFi network efficient and secure — all while saving you time and money.

Easier Wi-Fi Planning, Security & Management from the Cloud

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Wi-Fi access is ubiquitous, but it’s not always easy to plan, deploy, secure and manage, especially for distributed businesses and enterprises.

SonicWall believes there’s an easier approach. Our product teams have revamped our Wi-Fi management solutions with innovation at its foundation. Top-of-mind during the entire process, our focus was on evolving our Wi-Fi technology in four key areas: security, performance, simplicity and intuitiveness.

On paper, those sound obvious. But we wanted to be sure the execution matched the vision — to remove all the complexity without impacting the end-user experience. The outcome of this effort is four new SonicWall wireless solutions:

Intuitive wireless management for the next era

One of the constant nightmares for network admins is an unmanageable network. As your network expands, policies change and threats increase, it is often difficult to keep pace.

Discovering an outage only after it has happened — or malware after it has creeped into your network — is disastrous. SonicWall arms you with the right tool to gain insights into your network to keep pace with changing network requirements.

SonicWall WiFi Cloud Manager is an intuitive, scalable and centralized Wi-Fi network management system suitable for networks of any size. With simplified management, wireless analytics is richer and easily accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. The cloud-based management solution is designed to be user-friendly and resilient while simplifying access, control and troubleshooting capabilities.

With a fresh UI, WiFi Cloud Manager can be accessed via SonicWall Capture Security Center to deliver powerful features and simplified onboarding via the cloud from a single pane of glass. Centralized visibility and control over SonicWall’s wired and wireless networking hardware reduces complexity and the need for costly overlay management systems. It also can be deployed across multiple regions for greater network visibility into disturbed enterprises.

For network admins on the go, SonicWall introduces SonicWiFi mobile app to set up and monitor your network. Easily onboard your APs and setup mesh with this app. It is available on iOS and Android.

Advanced wireless security — with or without a firewall

Organizations, big and small, need secure wireless solutions for extending connectivity to employees, customers and guests. The new SonicWave 200 series wireless access points deliver enterprise-level performance and security with the range and reliability of 802.11ac Wave 2 technology at an affordable price.

Built on industry-leading next-gen security, these APs features a dedicated third radio for security scanning. In fact, advanced security features like Content Filtering Service (CFS) and the Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service can be performed on the AP itself, enabling organizations to mitigate cyberattacks even where firewalls aren’t deployed.

SonicWave 200 access points are available in three options, including 231c for indoor, 231o for outdoor and 224w for wall-mount requirements.

Manage dozens or even thousands of SonicWave wireless access points from anywhere you have an internet connection via the cloud or through the firewalls, providing you ultimate flexibility.

The SonicWall WiFi Cloud Manager provides you a single-pane-of-glass view of your entire wireless network. SonicWave access points also support SonicWall Zero-Touch Deployment, which allows the access points to be automatically identified and registered. SonicWiFi mobile app also lets you set up, manage and keep track of your network.

SonicWave access points leverage mesh technology to negate complexity from wireless expansion, especially at remote or distributed locations. Mesh networks are easy to set up, effortless to expand, and require fewer cables and less manpower to deploy, reducing installation costs. The new push-and-snap mounting bracket further adds to the ease of installation.

Easily plan, deploy your wireless networks

IT administrators often hear complaints about unreliable Wi-Fi connectivity leading to poor user experiences. This is mostly because Wi-Fi networks are not designed correctly to begin with. AP placements could be wrong, there may be radio frequency barriers or there simply isn’t enough capacity and coverage.

SonicWall WiFi Planner is a simple, easy-to-use, advanced wireless site survey tool that enables you to optimally design and deploy a wireless network for enhanced wireless user experience.

This tool lets you customize your settings per your surroundings and requirements to obtain maximum coverage with the fewest number of access points. You can prevent interference in your deployment on a best-effort basis through auto-channel assignment.

With a cloud-based UI, you also have the flexibility to collaborate with global teams. It is ideal for new access point deployments or to ensure excellent coverage in your wireless network. Available at no added cost, SonicWall WiFi Planner is accessible through WiFi Cloud Manager.

Together, these products deliver a powerful wireless solution, paving way for the next era of wireless security. Welcome to the future of wireless security.