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r/sysadmin • … • u/dvicci

Disable Access to Open Wi-Fi Networks

As part of a layered strategy, my company would like to disable access to open wi-fi networks (i.e., your Starbucks and McDonald's and hotels and the like) on our domain joined Win10 laptops. I think I've determined through Googling and docs that this isn't possible via GPO. It seems our only options via GPO or netsh are to whitelist those SSIDs we want to explicitly allow (not possible with work-from-home and traveling salesfolk).

Before I take it back to the boss, am I correct? If so, are there any strategies that others have employed, or products that can be leveraged for this? I'd like to present a solution, rather than just a problem.

\[Update: 2020/09/15\] Thanks everyone, for the excellent replies! This conversation was generated internally by a potential customer that wanted us to implement CIS-WAC-1 as "Implement configurations on client machines to only access authorized wireless networks." Some sort of pre-engagement security "finding". We thought, perhaps, that blacklisting "Open" wi-fi would suffice, but obviously hadn't thought through it well. Given travel requirements, and current work-from-home situations, white-listing wireless networks is not feasible. So we're going to answer accordingly and with the mitigation already in place (some mentioned by myron-semack below). Again, thanks!

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