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Secure Your Wireless NetworkFrom Tony Bradley, CISSP-ISSAP, Your Guide to Internet / Network Security. FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now! Dec 6 2007 Understanding the threats and how to protect your network against themConvenience at a PriceWireless networks have the potential to make enterprise networking much more efficient and cost effective. It is much easier to set a user up with a wireless network connection than to run Ethernet cabling from the nearest switch, through the walls and install a network jack at their desk. Wireless networks also help resolve the fairly ubiquitous problem of having too few network connections in conference rooms, and the fact that the conference room network connections are always at the least functional location possible.The convenience of wireless networks comes with a price though. Wired network access can be controlled because the data is contained within the cabling that connects the computer to the switch. With a wireless network, the cabling between the computer and the switch is called air, which any device within range can potentially access. If a user can connect with a wireless access point from 300 feet away, then in theory so can anyone else within a 300 foot radius of the wireless access point.
Threats to Wireless Network SecurityAside from the threat of unauthorized users accessing your network and eavesdropping your internal network communications by connecting with your wireless LAN (WLAN), there are a variety of threats posed by insecure, or improperly secured WLANs. Here is a brief list with descriptions of some of the primary threats:
Protecting Your Network from Your WLANLAN segmentation is used by many organizations to break the network down into smaller, more manageable compartments. Using different LAN segments or virtual LAN (VLAN) segments has a number of advantages. It can enable an organization to expand their network, reduce network congestion, compartmentalize problems for more efficient troubleshooting, and improve security by protecting different VLANs from each other.The improved security is an excellent reason to set your WLAN up on its own VLAN. You can allow all of the wireless devices to connect to the WLAN, but shield the rest of your internal network from any issues or attacks that may occur on the wireless network. Using a firewall, or router ACL (access control lists), you can restrict communications between the WLAN and the rest of the network. If you connect the WLAN to the internal network via a web proxy or VPN, you can even restrict access by wireless devices so that they can only surf the Web, or are only allowed to access certain folders or applications. |
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