Enhance Wireless Security: Upgrade 802.11 Networks To WPA

IT managers fed up with the security flaws in the wired equivalent privacy standard are wondering when to begin upgrading their enterprise 802.11 wireless LANs with Wi-Fi Protected Access. However, although there is much to be gained by moving to the . . . IT managers fed up with the security flaws in the wired equivalent privacy standard are wondering when to begin upgrading their enterprise 802.11 wireless LANs with Wi-Fi Protected Access. However, although there is much to be gained by moving to the latest security standard from the Wi-Fi Alliance, there are many things to consider before making the jump.

Ratified last year by the Wi-Fi Alliance, WPA addresses the security vulnerabilities found in WEP-enabled 802.11 WLANs. For example, WPA-compliant products will include dynamic key generation, as well as an improved RC4 data encryption scheme that uses TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) and mandatory 802.1x authentication.

WPA provides a much-enhanced RC4 encryption implementation through TKIP. TKIP makes the data packets more secure and is backward-compatible with WEP, although it also creates performance overhead. WPA also uses a new cryptographic checksum method called Michael that verifies the validity of an 8-byte message integrity code placed within the 802.11 frame to protect against forgery attacks.

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