Which authentication method is most scalable for enterprise WLAN deployments?

WPA2-PSK uses a single shared passphrase for all clients, making individual revocation impossible without changing the key for every device - not scalable for enterprises.

MAC filtering is not a true authentication mechanism and is trivially bypassed by MAC address spoofing, while also requiring manual administration of every device.

WPA3-SAE improves on PSK with Simultaneous Authentication of Equals, but it is still a shared credential model that lacks the per-user identity and centralized policy control required for enterprise deployments.

802.1X with RADIUS decouples authentication from the AP by offloading credential verification to a centralized RADIUS server, supporting EAP methods like PEAP and EAP-TLS. This allows individual user and device credentials, granular policy enforcement, and easy revocation without changing a shared key. It is the IEEE and industry standard for enterprise WLAN security at scale.