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Wireless Network Security and Integration "As a Wireless Integrator, Micro/Net Solutions can utilize its strong knowledge of network, device, and security to provide our clients with practical and efficient network solutions to meet their company's needs." |
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Why Wireless Security? Analysts estimate that 30% or more of access points in enterprise settings are unsecured, rogue access points. Employees deploy most of these access points for personal benefit, but the access points can unintentionally make the network vulnerable to attacks by hackers. Manual detection of rogue access points can be very expensive and time-consuming, as well as not very thorough. |
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Is it really a problem? The perils awaiting unprotected WLANs are many. Wireless traffic is easily recorded. Passive eavesdroppers can gather proprietary information, logins, passwords, intranet server addresses, and valid network and station addresses. Intruders can steal Internet bandwidth, transmit spam, or use your network as a springboard to attack others. They can capture and modify traffic to masquerade as you, with financial or legal consequences. Even a low-tech attacker can disrupt your business by launching wireless packet floods against your APs, nearby servers, next-hop wired network or Internet uplink. Fortunately, these risks are not yet heavily exploited. Jupiter Media
Research recently reported that 26 percent of surveyed businesses had
experienced at least one type of WLAN attack in the past year. However,
most of these incidents were problems waiting to happen: rogue APs, stations
associating with the wrong AP and war driving. Serious security breaches--like
wired network intrusion, theft of confidential data and forgery--were
far less common, according to the survey. If you don't know what you're defending and why, your security measures are just shots in the dark. It's critical to identify business assets that must be protected and the impact of damage, theft or loss. How do I secure it?
Basic 802.11 security deters accidental association or casual eavesdropping. In most WLAN products, however, these security features are disabled by default. Disabled means the WLAN operates in "open system" mode--any station can join because they know the network's Service Set Identifier (SSID) or by capturing beacon frames broadcast by APs. The 802.11 standard's security is composed of authentication and encryption. When shared-key authentication is enabled, stations can associate with the AP only if they have a 40- or 128-bit key known to both parties. When Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is enabled, the same key is fed into the RC4 cipher to encrypt data frames. Only stations that possess the shared key can join the WLAN, but the same key decrypts frames transmitted by other stations. If your policy requires authentication of individual stations, or confidentiality beyond the air link, you must adopt other measures. Configuring a hard-to-guess SSID makes neighbors less likely to mistake
your WLAN for their own. Stations running Windows XP automatically join
any discovered network by default. Enabling shared-key authentication
prevents this. Using WEP is like locking your office desk. Motivated intruders
can jimmy a low-grade lock. Given enough data, a persistent attacker can
use freeware tools to crack WEP. Nevertheless, these can be your first
line of defense. Small business and home networks should always use them;
enterprises may opt for higher-level measures. The 802.1X standard addresses
the need for more robust authentication, and the 802.11i standard's Temporal
Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) provides for more robust encryption. More Questions? Contact a Micro/Net Solutions Account Executive today to discuss our range of plans to include analysis and assessment of your wireless network. |
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