WIRELESS LAN AND SECURITIES

ABSTRACT

Motivated by the need to reduce IT costs while increasing employee productivity; enterprise-wide Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) solutions are becoming increasingly viable. With Wireless LAN’s users can access shared information without having to look for a place to plug in, and network managers can setup or augment networks without installing or moving wires. Thus Wireless LAN’s have gained extreme popularity in a variety of industries and applications over the last few years, health-care, retail, manufacturing, warehousing, and academics to name a few. Proliferation of Mobile computing devices has boosted employee demand for access to their organization network beyond the tether of their office workstation. Meanwhile, accelerated wireless transmission rates and increasing vendor adherence to standard based interoperability are enhancing the practicality of Wireless LAN’s. Yet the same wireless technologies that can erase the physical limitations of wired communications to increase user flexibility, boost employee productivity, and lower cost of network ownership also expose network based assets to considerable risks.
The Security embedded in wireless LAN’s technologies falls short of providing adequate protection. Early adopting organizations have found that evaluating, and where possible, mitigating these risks before deploying a wireless LAN is beneficial. This paper also summarizes wireless network security planning by providing an overview of the security risks and technical challenges in this area, as well as summarizing key recommendations for a secure Wireless LAN’s.