Fred provides his thoughts on the state of wireless security. "Bandwidth on the run... That's what we all seem to want, but of course that's not all we get. When we use radio instead of wires we trade the limited physical . . .
Fred provides his thoughts on the state of wireless security. "Bandwidth on the run... That's what we all seem to want, but of course that's not all we get. When we use radio instead of wires we trade the limited physical security of the wires inside our buildings for the unlimited lack of physical security of radios. Combine this with the removal of most of the firewalls and intrusion detection systems and the lack of adequate use of encryption technology, and you have a recepie for protection failures.

While I knew this was how it was a long time ago, the first time I saw such a thing in action was at the HTCIA conference a few years back. One of the AT&T folks who was there had a wireless LAN PCMCIA card rigged in his computer and just popped up the old network neighborhood. There they were, a few dozen computers all using the default network information, all accessible over the air. He briefly went into a few remote disks, added a file, copied a file out, then undid it all. It was a simple enough demonstration, it didn't take but a minute, and we all laughed. We knew that the wireless revolution would mean even less protection and more job security.

The wireless revolution - gateway to the stars...

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