AMX Modero ViewPoint MVP-8400 - Manual (Page 200)

Appendix B - Wireless Technology
186 MVP-7500/8400 Modero Viewpoint Wireless Touch Panels
Terminology
802.1x
IEEE 802.1x is an IEEE standard that is built on the Internet standard EAP (Extensible Authentication
Protocol). 802.1x is a standard for passing EAP messages over either a wired or wireless LAN. Additionally,
802.1x is also responsible for communicating the method with which WAPs and wireless users can share and
change encryption keys. This continuous key change helps resolve any major security vulnerabilities native to
WEP.
AES
Short for Advanced Encryption Standard, is a cipher currently approved by the NSA to protect US
Government documents classified as Top Secret. The AES cipher is the first cipher protecting Top Secret
information available to the general public.
CERTIFICATES (CA)
A certificate can have many forms, but at the most basic level, a certificate is an identity combined with a
public key, and then signed by a certification authority. The certificate authority (CA) is a trusted external third
party which "signs" or validates the certificate. When a certificate has been signed, it gains some cryptographic
properties. AMX supports the following security certificates within three different formats:
 PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail)
 DER (Distinguished Encoding Rules)
 PKCS12 (Public Key Cryptography Standard #12)
Typical certificate information can include the following items:
 Certificate Issue Date
 Extensions
 Issuer
 Public Key
 Serial Number
 Signature Algorithm
 User
 Version
MIC
Short for Message Integrity Check, this prevents forged packets from being sent. Through WEP, it was
possible to alter a packet whose content was known even if it had not been decrypted.
TKIP
Short for Temporal Key Integration, this is part of the IEEE 802.11i encryption standard for wireless LANs.
TKIP provides a per-packet key mixing, message integrity check and re-keying mechanism, thus ensuring that
every data packet is sent with its own unique encryption key. Key mixing increases the complexity of decoding
the keys by giving the hacker much less data that has been encrypted using any one key.
WEP
Short for Wired Equivalent Privacy, WEP is a scheme used to secure wireless networks (Wi-Fi). A wireless
network broadcasts messages using radio which are particularly susceptible to hacker attacks. WEP was
intended to provide the confidentiality and security comparable to that of a traditional wired network. As a
result of identified weaknesses in this scheme, WEP was superseded by Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and
then by the full IEEE 802.11i standard (also known as WPA2).
WPA
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) is a class of system used to secure wireless (Wi-Fi) computer
networks. It was created in response to several serious weaknesses researchers had found in the previous WEP
system. WPA implements the majority of the IEEE 802.11i standard, and was intended as an intermediate
measure to take the place of WEP while 802.11i was prepared (WPA2).
WPA is designed to work with all wireless network interface cards, but not necessarily with first generation
wireless access points.