Mac IP Restriction – How to Enforce “IP Lock” in G Suite?

Published By Kumar Raj

Approved By Aswin Vijayan

Published On August 7th, 2018

Reading Time 5 Minutes Reading

“Since 2 to 3 weeks, I am noticing different sorts of hacking attacks from Korean and Chinese IP addresses. I work on a Mac operating system for business as well as professional purpose. Is there any way to perform Mac IP restriction? Through this, I can control the data accessing over my network.”

There are chances of MAC addresses to be spooked or faked. In such case, it becomes important to enable MAC IP address filtering. The enterprise administrators should limit down the IP addresses of any user and allow only the authorized employees to work within the Apple network. This post is going to aware readers from method to perform Mac IP restriction with its role in businesses.

Overview on Mac Address Filtering or Mac IP Restriction

Mac IP restriction or Address filtering both are the same things in which you have to define list of devices. Only these devices are permitted to work within your network. It is a feature for IPv4 addresses, which permits users to exclude or include the systems and components that are MAC-based.

Set Mac IP Address Filtering

‘IP Address’ is the number, which uniquely identifies a PC or network device. Especially, it is utilized to mention the receiver of data packets. Each device is assigned with a unique IP address like a student’s roll number in the classroom. Well, IP address filtering is used to allow devices to connect with the authorized items by registering IP addresses. When an individual configures MAC address filtering, you can enter the kind of hardware that is not to be removed from filtering. At the initial stage, all hardware is defined under RFC 1700. In order to alter the exemptions of hardware type, follow below guidelines:

1. Right-click on the IPv4 node in the DHCP console and select Properties
2. Click on the Advance button under the Filters tab. This opens an Advance Filter Properties window. Enable the checkbox of hardware types for exempting from filtering. Filter out the desired hardware by disabling their checkboxes
3. When you are done with all this, click on OK button to save the changes

Before you begin with procedure of configuring Mac IP restriction, you should go through following instructions:

• Activate and then define an explicit allow list. The server of DHCP renders all its services only to the customers whose MAC addresses are present in this list. Any user who previously encountered IP addresses is considered as ‘denial address renewal’ if associated MAC address is not present in the allow list.
• Enable and then define the explicit deny list. The server of DHCP denies services to those users whose MAC addresses are available in the deny list. Any customer who earlier received IP addresses is ‘denial address renewal’ if it is available in the deny list.
• Enable and create a block list and an allow list. The block list is having precedence over an allow list. This states that the DHCP server equips DHCP services only to those customers whose MAC IP addresses are available in the allow list. If in case the IP address is denied then, it gets blocked, even if it is present in the allow list.

You can take help of following steps to activate deny list, allow list, or both for MAC IP address restriction procedure:

1. Right-click on the IPv4 node in DHCP console and click on Properties
2. Have a look on recent details of the filter configuration under Filter tab. Select Enable Allow List for using the allow list. Similarly, choose Enable Deny List for enabling deny list
3. At last, click on OK for saving all the made changes

Once you are done with enabling of allow list and deny list, define filters through MAC addresses for client’s PC or network adapter of devices. You can execute ipconfig /all in command prompt window to determine the MAC address of client’s PC. The entry of Physical Address displays the MAC address of client system. Copy and paste this value somewhere safe on your computer.

At the time of defining filter, mention the MAC IP address with or without hypens. This means that you can mention address as FE0156231894EBF2 or FE-01-56-23-18-94-EB-F2. Also, you can make use of asterisk (*) as a wildcard to exhibit pattern matching. Well, now it is the time to execute following guidelines for configuring MAC IP restriction:

1. Open DHCP console and then, double click on the IPv4 node >> Filter node
2. Either right-click on the Allow or Deny, as per suitable for filtering type that you are developing. Click on New Filter to proceed with MAC IP address filtering
3. Enter the address to be filtered and if desire, mention a comment in Description field
4. Click on Add button and repeat Step (3) and (4), until-and-unless all filters do not get added
5. Click on Close when you are done with entire process.

How to Enforce “IP Lock” in G Suite?

All the above steps provide solutions of MAC address filtering for client’s PC. What if a MAC user demands for IP Lock feature in G Suite? Unfortunately, there is no manual approach to the same due to which businesses have to opt for G Suite Cloud Security providers. Either enterprises are working over MAC OS or MS Windows OS, CASB solution providers give security to all customers. They ensure their customers that business data will be safe on cloud whether it is accessed from an Apple laptop or Windows PC. Several services are available for the same and among all is CloudCodes. This solution offers different features associated with G control like G Suite MAC IP restriction, secure password policy, MFA, Browser Restriction, Time Restriction, etc. Enterprises can rely on this solution and ensure their data security when it is getting accessed from different devices.