WLAN Security: Current and Future

Many companies, organizations, and even individuals implement wireless local area networks (WLANs) in various locations such as their offices, conference rooms, homes, and business areas. This type of connection offers users portability because they can move from one location to another while maintaining access to the corporate network, but it does not offer access between locations. Mobility, on the other hand, lets users access the corporate network not only near multiple access locations but also everywhere in between. WLANs let users access a high-speed connection in areas where physically wired networks can’t penetrate or are not cost effective. Many companies use WLANs as add-ons to their main wired networks. A recent study found that corporations that implemented WLANs increased the availability of their corporate network by 70 minutes per day for the average user, which in turn also enhanced productivity within the corporation by as much as 22 percent.1 WLANs also offer much-needed flexibility in a world of high-speed data networks. Administrators can install them quicker, easier, and more cost-efficiently than traditional wired networks. A WLAN’s flexibility provides an easy way to install a new network, whether an extension of a wired network or a pure WLAN. The ease and speed with which these networks can be installed is unprecedented: high-speed networks can be installed for a week or a day and then removed once they are no longer needed. The fact that such temporary installations can be created cost-efficiently is a major selling point for WLAN integrations. Although WLANs solve some problems that exist in traditional wired LANs, they also introduce new security issues. In this article, we identify current and future WLAN security concerns and possible countermeasures, including standards, technologies, management, policies, and service environments. The risks that WLAN services present can only be mitigated rather than completely eliminated. Although there is no single solution for perfect WLAN security, we believe that WLAN security can be enhanced to an acceptable level by a proper combination of countermeasures.