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At a time when awareness of security is high, operating system and software vulnerabilities are monitored and quickly patched, and security vendors are amongst a small group in the IT industry who are maintaining healthy profits, the level of nonchalance to wireless security seems almost out of place. A paper entitled "Your 802.11 Wireless Network has No Clothes," by three members of the University of Maryland, states that "current wireless access points present a larger security problem than the early Internet connections." Their conclusion was that the current technologies and standards needed replacing. But an interim measure--which seems common sense--is a robust key management systems and a higher-level security mechanism (such as IPSec). So, is your wireless network wearing any clothes? At a minimum, are you running in infrastructure mode rather than ad-hoc mode, so all clients must communicate via an access point? Have you changed the default name and enabled WEP? Are you running a secure protocol with 128-bit encryption, such as IPSec? Be aware that for all the benefits of wireless LANs, it's a potential entry point into your network, and like an Internet connection, needs to be secured.
So, is your wireless network wearing any clothes? At a minimum, are you running in infrastructure mode rather than ad-hoc mode, so all clients must communicate via an access point? Have you changed the default name and enabled WEP? Are you running a secure protocol with 128-bit encryption, such as IPSec? Be aware that for all the benefits of wireless LANs, it's a potential entry point into your network, and like an Internet connection, needs to be secured. As wireless networking grows in popularity and is extended from notebooks to PDAs and other portable devices, the magnitude of the threat will grow. IDC reports the number of wireless subscribers with Internet access worldwide currently exceeds 15 million, and Jupiter Media Metrix expects this number to soar to 96 million in the U.S. alone by 2005. Giga Information Group's forecast is that more than 32 million PDAs and smartphones will be in use by 2003. There is a corresponding increase in focus from the vendors on implementing security measures--such as digital certificates--for PDAs. Unfortunately, the lax attitude and lack of basic security on wireless networks suggest that there is a long way to go (or some well-publicized security compromises) before anything changes. How would you characterize the concern over wireless security at your organization? TalkBack below or e-mail us with your thoughts.
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