Articles
802.11 WLAN Security — Gaining Market Momentum
May 26, 2004
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802.11 wireless LANs continue to gain market momentum. Higher speeds, larger bandwidth and improved quality of service are helping businesses realize the potential business benefits that wireless networking delivers. Now, with this growing adoption of 802.11 wireless LANs, security has become a focal point regarding the decision to deploy a wireless LAN.
While wireless networking has several advantages over a traditional wired LAN, it introduces security risks that a wired LAN is not susceptible to. Without a robust wireless security solution, organizations leave themselves vulnerable to attack through their WLAN. Although malicious attacks are a non-controllable reality, companies can take action to integrate a solid wireless security solution that prevents unauthorized users from accessing confidential company information.
Authentication and data encryption are the key components of wireless LAN security to help prevent unauthorized users from accessing the network and compromising confidential information. Standard 802.11 security has two major issues: 1) authentication of wireless clients is missing, so unauthorized users may be able to access network resources, and 2) weak encryption results in minimal effort for attackers to decipher data transmissions.
