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| Tech Update Security |
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Lock up your wireless LAN
The weakest link
By George Lawton
September 4, 2001
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Pescatore expects the various security technologies such as personal firewalls, VPN clients, and desktop antivirus software to converge, which should improve security over both WLANs and the Internet. But regardless of the technology, WLAN security will always be limited because users will sidestep security features.
You can slow down and frustrate hackers by adding multiple security layers to your system, such as biometrics and hardware tokens. A hardware token is a device, usually a small card, which displays a password that changes over time. If one of these falls into the wrong hands, the IT department must be alerted so that it can disable access. Biometric units, on the other hand, are harder to foil because they require someone's eye or finger to be scanned. Of course this makes life less convenient for employees, but at least these security measures can't be sidestepped, unlike storing passwords.
You can also set up a secure network to require a token or a biometric scan every time it is accessed--a safeguard that can't be disabled by the user.
And for your ultimate wireless LAN strategy, you might even have the network require a new login every hour--just so a hacker can't log in from a laptop while its owner is eating lunch.
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