The phrase “Going rogue” evokes a sense of reckless abandon and adventure in many scenarios – but not in the case of your network. When it comes to IT infrastructure, “rogue” means dangerous.
In this increasingly digital era, where wireless devices are commonplace at home and work, bad actors are planting rogue devices on networks for malicious purposes. What’s a rogue device? Any wireless device that is connected to a network without permission. Rogue devices are used to steal information or disrupt network operations – and they often use malware to cause permanent damage. They may be access points like routers or end-user devices like phones, smart watches, or laptops. They can even be IoT devices such as those found in the home – smart refrigerators, doorbells, or alarm systems, to name a few.
How do rogue devices gain access? They use a growing number of entry points and methods:
- A misconfigured network device
- Malicious USBs left lying around
- Social engineering and phishing attacks that prompt accidental malware installs
- Scam Wi-Fi hotspots that spoof trusted entities
- Direct access to machines via stolen credentials
- Unmonitored virtual machines that can be created and deleted at will
The list goes on. With consumers and organizations increasingly reliant on a growing number of wireless devices, it’s becoming easier and more common for bad actors to leverage these tactics. Once a rogue device successfully connects to a network, there’s no limit to the problems it can cause. To make matters worse, it only needs to connect briefly in many cases to launch an attack.
More Devices in the Home Leaves Consumers Vulnerable to Attack
Modern consumers rely heavily on internet-connected devices for everything from work to shopping, socializing, entertainment, fitness, and more. Managing all those connected devices—from laptops and tablets to phones, watches, Fitbits, and an exploding number of IoT appliances—has become critical to protecting personal information.
Consumers aren’t the only ones having trouble managing their networks and the growing number of wireless devices attached to them. In the wake of remote and hybrid work models, more people are working from home than ever and signing onto corporate networks with multiple – often unsecured – wireless devices.
Enterprise IT teams have been scrambling to keep up, but detecting rogue devices using manual methods is ineffective. With so many unmonitored devices accessing the network, it’s often impossible for organizations to distinguish between an authorized employee accessing network resources and a rogue device that poses a serious threat to corporate security.
For telecommunications companies, competitive advantage hinges on providing exceptional service. One way to set themselves apart is by giving consumers the ability to manage their home networks effectively and empower them with tools to spot rogue devices and ward off malicious network activity. Telecom providers can help their customers mitigate the threat of rogue devices by embedding IT scanning and device recognition capabilities into their equipment to automatically detect and recognize wireless devices that don’t belong on the network.
Providing Complete Network Visibility at All Times
Lansweeper leverages patented device fingerprinting technology and advanced machine-learning techniques to identify and recognize all network-connected IT, OT, and IoT in seconds—including rogue devices—even when they only briefly connect to the network. Working behind the scenes, it automatically and continually updates the IT asset inventory with the most complete and accurate device information based on a database of billions of uniquely identified devices.
Lansweeper’s solution works independently of context. It’s fully credentialless, meaning it has no access to privileged information on a user’s device. Moreover, it uses standard network protocols and avoids deep scan and packet inspection, which would require additional hardware and software resources that drive up costs.
With Lansweeper’s device recognition technology, customers always have access to a complete, detailed list of all connected devices in the home. This information can be used to investigate and troubleshoot network issues, such as data usage and signal strength. If a rogue device infiltrates the network, customers will know immediately and can isolate and disable it before it does any damage.
Easy to Embed, Essential to Network Security
Lanswseeper’s device recognition provides valuable data from limited information about all devices connected to the network – whether legitimate or rogue – empowering consumers and businesses to reduce the risk of a damaging data breach.
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