84 Eleventh Hour Security : Exam SY0-201 Study Guide EXAM WARNING While the Security exam does not cover the authentication process in great detail, it is important to remember the two authentication mechanisms in the 802.11 standard: open and shared-key. 802.1X AUTHENTICATION To address the weaknesses in WEP, many vendors (including Cisco and Microsoft) adopted the IEEE 802.1x authentication mechanism for wireless networks. The IEEE 802.1x standard was created for the purpose of providing a security framework for port-based access control that resides in the upper layers of the protocol stack. The most common method for port-based access control is to enable new authentication and key management methods without chang- ing current network devices. The 802.1x authentication method is covered in more detail in Chapter 8, "Network Authentication".