No WLAN? You still need wireless security

Although most wireless security solutions target organizations that have deployed wireless networks, there is a class of solutions that target all companies--even those that haven't deployed wireless networks. These solutions detect the existence of rogue access points. (An access point is a transceiver that connects devices on a wireless LAN to the wired infrastructure. A rogue access point is not authorized by an organization's IT department for operation.) Setting up an access point is child's play. In addition to plugging the access point into a power source, all one has to do is connect one end of an Ethernet cable to an available Ethernet port, connect the other end to an access point and voila! A new Wi-Fi WLAN is born.

Not all rogue access points are malicious. Until my IT department found out about it and asked me to shut it down, I ran a rogue access point for almost two years (long before Wi-Fi was popular). So early was it in the history of Wi-Fi, that the software for setting up, managing, and securing my Lucent-based 802.11b WLAN was both proprietary and not very user friendly. Knowing that hardly anyone was using Wi-Fi at the time, I didn't bother securing it. Eventually, the company standardized on a single vendor's technology for deploying and securing WLANs and, knowing about my access point through the grapevine, the IT department saw my rogue WLAN for what it was: a back door that bypassed all of the hard work and planning that went into building a secure Wi-Fi network.

Nick Miller, CEO of wireless management solution provider Cirond, put the problem in simple terms. "Companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars and man-hours on network security," said Miller, "and all it takes is a $30 access point to render that investment useless."

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