Every new technology gives birth to new security and privacy fears. When
mobile phones first started
gaining popularity in the late '80s and early
'90s, it seemed anyone who could navigate a Radio Shack could put together a
little receiver to intercept random
cell traffic from the air. Although carriers have made it a little harder to do
that today, the sense that some conversations are better had in person, or over
a wired line, has not disappeared.
With the increasing proliferation of networks and devices to transmit data
over the airwaves, there will be more at stake than discussions of
what to pick up at the store on the way home from the office.
Since so much of that data is expected to be work-related, the worries will likely
be greatest for the corporate entity.
"Security and privacy are definitely
a problem on the consumer side, but
nowhere near as much as on the enterprise side," Brent Iadarola, an analyst
with Frost & Sullivan, told
Wireless NewsFactor.
In the end, though, corporate and consumer users alike may find that
wireless security technology is better than they think, and the biggest threat to the
safety of their personal and professional data is their own behavior.
Uneasy Enterprises
For the enterprise, there are two areas of wireless-technology on the horizon that
are provoking security concerns:
In the near term,
Wi-Fi networks are
proliferating, and their associated security problems already have generated much
publicity. Further
down the line are the advanced networks being rolled out by the major
carriers -- all of whom are betting on business users to be the first to adopt
their high-end data services.
The funny thing, analysts and security providers say, is that
technologically, most of the security questions for Wi-Fi users have been
answered.
WEP Bashing
Tony Rosati, vice president of marketing for
Certicom, points out
that most of the Wi-Fi fears centered around inadequacies in the standard's
Wireless Equivalent Protocol, or WEP.
In the early days, stories came out that
anyone who knew what he was doing could crack WEP like smashing a glass
window. Those stories proliferated and stuck, in spite of their
faulty assumption that bars and an alarm system could not be installed to
protect the WEP "window."
"Security is always tackled in layers," Rosati told Wireless NewsFactor.
"WEP wasn't meant to be an all-encompassing security solution."
Security Turnoffs
What comes very close to being just that is a VPN, or
virtual private network.
A VPN uses encryption technology
to run a "tunnel" from behind a
corporate firewall directly into a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, making the data
inaccessible anywhere along the network, whether it is traveling in wired or
wireless segments. (continued...)
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