Enhancing WLAN Security In Campus Networks With Best Practices

While no Ethernet-based network can be considered a "secure" communications medium, network operators take some solace that the exposure of traffic for a LAN is limited to those stations that have "physical access" to it. With a wireless LAN (WLAN), there . . . While no Ethernet-based network can be considered a "secure" communications medium, network operators take some solace that the exposure of traffic for a LAN is limited to those stations that have "physical access" to it. With a wireless LAN (WLAN), there is not even this meager security, as physical access to radio waves is defined by nothing stronger than geographic proximity. Unfortunately, the standard method for addressing this proximity vulnerability, "Wired Equivalent Privacy" (WEP), is not suitable for large-scale networks due to its shared-key nature and deficiencies in the encryption algorithm. As a result, enterprises and service providers alike have struggled with how to control access to their WLAN infrastructures so that the network is both usable and no worse than wired Ethernet in terms of data privacy.

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