NetAlly's CyberScope Air, tested by Network Computing

When NetAlly launched its CyberScope last year it proudly hailed it as the world’s first wired and wireless handheld network vulnerability scanner capable of providing in-depth cybersecurity analysis and reporting. NetAlly has now released the CyberScope Air, which places all the same great features in the hands of technicians responsible for wireless security at the network edge.
As you’d expect, the CyberScope Air fully supports Wi-Fi 6/6E networks and brings visibility into the 6GHz band, where it can connect at its full data rate and capture frames. It’s capable of providing a wealth of information including site surveying, analysis and troubleshooting tools, network discovery, L2 and L3 path analysis, short-term monitoring facilities with real-time wireless measurements and trend graphs that highlight network changes over time.

The CyberScope Air identifies all Wi-Fi and Bluetooth/BLE devices, shows where they are connected and can easily spot rogue access points (APs). Even better, it identifies everything on wireless networks including IoT, OT and unmanaged devices.

Vulnerability scanning gets a big boost as the CyberScope Air runs the well-respected Nmap utility. It can perform on-demand scans for endpoint audits using built-in or custom scripts and neatly integrates Nmap with its AutoTest and network discovery tools.

The device also works directly with NetAlly’s Link-Live cloud portal for topology mapping, analytics and remote control. Link-Live sees a significant upgrade as it adds an interactive dashboard view of discovery results and WiFi data to provide technicians with an ‘at a glance’ snapshot of what is happening on their wireless networks.

The CyberScope Air runs the same Android-based OS as NetAlly’s other handheld analysis products, which will appeal to novices as well as technicians and engineers. As we’ve frequently said in previous NetAlly product reviews - if they can use a mobile, they can use the CyberScope Air.

The 5in. colour touchscreen presents icons for quick one-tap access to all tasks and you can install other third-party Android apps. The screen’s FAB (floating access button) opens floating action menus offering instant access to further analysis tools related to the selected task.

The CyberScope Air is easy to use and for testing, we created new AutoTest Wi-Fi profiles that connected to the lab’s Netgear WAX630E and Zyxel WAX640S-6E tri-band APs over their 6GHz radios using WPA3 encryption. Profiles are started with one tap and after 25 seconds, they reported back with an incredible amount of wireless information presented as ‘cards’ colour coded to indicate warnings or errors.

The Wi-Fi test discovers internal and external wireless networks with the Channels map screen offering an extra Map 6E tab. You can drill down for more details on channels, active SSIDs, associated APs, encryption schemes, connected clients and detected Bluetooth/BLE devices.

Nothing can hide from the Discovery tool which presented us with a list of every device on our network – including some we didn’t know about that warranted further investigation. Nmap is another one-tap app where you can run any of the predefined tests or create your own scripts for deeper endpoint analysis.

After claiming the device for our Link-Live portal account, we could upload test results, browse them at our leisure and share them with colleagues. The interactive dashboard view is very impressive as it presents a heap of graphs showing the number of discovered Wi-Fi devices, SSIDs, channels in use, active encryption schemes and much more.

The combination of powerful diagnostics tools and vulnerability scanning makes NetAlly’s CyberScope Air a highly desirable tool for technicians tasked with maintaining wireless network security. It’s remarkably easy to use and clearly capable of filling the security gaps that common network monitoring products leave behind.

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