Restrict Wireless Client to only our network

2 Jan 2007 4:43 PM

Mark V. Cox

We have laptops running Windows XP Service Pack 2. For security reasons, we
wish to restrict the 802.11 card to only connect to our access points. We
can add our networks to the preferred list using group policy, however, there
is nothing preventing the user from connecting to any wireless network they
come in range of. Is there a way to lock down the wireless settings so that
it only connects to our list of preferred networks and not allow the user to
add any more?

2 Jan 2007 8:08 PM

smlunatick

Yes. The individual users should not have "administrator" rights.
When a user has "administrator" rights, they can change any settings,
including network settings (wireless.) If they are setting to a
"lower" level of user group (User -- Reistrited user or Standard user
-- Power User.) they can not chnage the network settings.

Mark V. Cox wrote:
Show quoteHide quote

> We have laptops running Windows XP Service Pack 2. For security reasons, we
> wish to restrict the 802.11 card to only connect to our access points. We
> can add our networks to the preferred list using group policy, however, there
> is nothing preventing the user from connecting to any wireless network they
> come in range of. Is there a way to lock down the wireless settings so that
> it only connects to our list of preferred networks and not allow the user to
> add any more?

2 Jan 2007 11:35 PM

Mark V. Cox

Thanks for the quick reply, but this is not true. I just logged into a
machine with only user rights and I was able to connect to any wireless
network I wanted and every wireless network I connected to was added to the
preferred network list. By taking away administrator rights, I was blocked
from getting to the TCP/IP properties and some other settings. So still the
question stands- how does one prevent a user from connecting to any wireless
network in range and only allow connections to your network?

Show quoteHide quote

"smlunatick" wrote:

> Yes. The individual users should not have "administrator" rights.
> When a user has "administrator" rights, they can change any settings,
> including network settings (wireless.) If they are setting to a
> "lower" level of user group (User -- Reistrited user or Standard user
> -- Power User.) they can not chnage the network settings.
>
>
> Mark V. Cox wrote:
> > We have laptops running Windows XP Service Pack 2. For security reasons, we
> > wish to restrict the 802.11 card to only connect to our access points. We
> > can add our networks to the preferred list using group policy, however, there
> > is nothing preventing the user from connecting to any wireless network they
> > come in range of. Is there a way to lock down the wireless settings so that
> > it only connects to our list of preferred networks and not allow the user to
> > add any more?
>
>