How Hibbett Deployed Cloud RADIUS and Certificate‑Based Wi‑Fi at Retail Scale
Hibbett, one of the nation’s largest athletic retailers, wanted to modernize its wireless security strategy and move away from pre-shared keys (PSKs) toward stronger, certificate-based authentication at scale. While corporate locations had already adopted certificate-based Wi-Fi, expanding EAP-TLS to every retail store required a more flexible, cloud-native approach that wouldn’t disrupt existing infrastructure.
Foxpass provided exactly that: a cloud-hosted RADIUS service with a purpose-built integration to Foxpass Cloud PKI, enabling Hibbett to deploy secure, certificate-based Wi-Fi across 1,000+ stores with an exceptional rollout success and dramatically reduced operational overhead.
The Situation: Scaling Wi-Fi Security Across 1,000+ Retail Stores
At the retail store level, Hibbett relied on PSKs for Wi-Fi access — a method that becomes difficult to manage and insecure at enterprise scale. Their Director of IT Security Engineering & Operations described PSKs as something suited for a “Mom & Pop shop,” not a large, multi-billion-dollar retail organization.
The business needed:
A standardized, secure authentication model across all locations
Passwordless, certificate-based Wi-Fi
A seamless roaming experience for managers and district teams
A reduction in the operational overhead associated with PSK rotation and turnover
The goal was clear: modernize Wi-Fi security across the entire retail and corporate footprint.
The Turning Point: Legacy PKI Constraints Made Expansion Impractical
Corporate headquarters already used certificate-based authentication, but store-wide expansion required capabilities their existing PKI environment couldn’t easily support.
The challenge lay not in adopting EAP-TLS, but in deploying it enterprise-wide without rebuilding the underlying PKI or network authentication infrastructure.
Like many long-established organizations, Hibbett’s pre-existing PKI infrastructure was not designed to support:
Certificate issuance to thousands of shared retail devices
Distributed certificate lifecycle operations
Consistent deployment across 1,000+ geographically dispersed stores
Rebuilding PKI internally would have required substantial time, investment, and maintenance. Hibbett instead sought a cloud-native approach that delivered flexibility, manageability, and scale without disrupting existing systems.
Foxpass Cloud RADIUS and Cloud PKI offered exactly that.
The Solution: Cloud RADIUS + Device‑Based Certificates at Retail Scale
Unified Corporate SSID for Every Store
Using Foxpass Cloud RADIUS as the authentication backbone, Hibbett deployed the same secure corporate SSID across all stores. This provided:
Instant connectivity for corporate employees and management traveling between locations
Seamless onboarding when they visited HQ or the distribution center
One consistent, secure wireless experience across the entire enterprise
Device-Based Certificate Authentication
Store handhelds are shared devices with high turnover, making per-user certificates unmanageable.
Hibbett became one of Foxpass’s earliest adopters of device-based authentication, issuing certificates per device instead of per user — a requirement no competing vendor could support at the time.
Device-based authentication provided:
Stable, persistent identity for each handheld
No certificate re-issuance required during staff turnover
Simple, scalable certificate lifecycle management
Purpose-Built Foxpass Cloud PKI Integration
Foxpass Cloud PKI streamlined certificate issuance and renewal:
Automated certificate provisioning, renewal, and invalidation
Consistent profiles for all devices
Zero reliance on legacy PKI infrastructure
Cloud Simplicity Without Rebuilding Infrastructure
With Foxpass, Hibbett avoided relying on their complex legacy PKI infrastructure. Foxpass provided a clean, cloud-native RADIUS and certificate platform that simply worked.
The Rollout: A Near‑Zero‑Issue Deployment Across Thousands of Devices
Migrating a retail enterprise of Hibbett’s size is no small feat. Across roughly:
1,000 stores
4–5 handheld devices per store (~4,000–5,000 devices total)
They encountered only 46 certificate enrollment errors — an error rate of just over 1%. For a retail organization of this size and distribution, this is an exceptionally low rate and demonstrates the stability of Foxpass’s Cloud PKI + Cloud RADIUS integration. The simplicity and consistency of the Foxpass deployment allowed Hibbett to bring certificate-based Wi-Fi to every store quickly, reliably, and with minimal troubleshooting
Foxpass allowed Hibbett to significantly modernize their authentication architecture:
- Standardized certificate-based Wi-Fi across all locations
- Passwordless EAP-TLS replaces all PSKs
- Seamless roaming across stores, HQ, and distribution centers
- Less than 1% provisioning issues across thousands of devices
- No need to rebuild or maintain internal PKI
- Strong zero-trust foundation for retail-scale network access
Why Foxpass: Built for Zero-Trust, Retail Environments, and Scale
Hibbett chose Foxpass because it offered:
A cloud-hosted RADIUS platform designed for EAP-TLS
A tightly integrated Cloud PKI with automated lifecycle management
Device-based certificate support critical for shared retail endpoints
A fast rollout path with minimal operational overhead
Scalability to thousands of endpoints across 1,000+ stores
A zero-trust, passwordless security approach
About Foxpass
Foxpass Cloud RADIUS + Cloud PKI provides secure, passwordless, certificate-based and identity-based authentication for Wi-Fi, VPN, and network access. With seamless integrations, automated certificate management, and zero-trust alignment, Foxpass helps organizations simplify network security at scale — all backed by Splashtop’s global reliability and enterprise-grade support.