While the past of Wi-Fi has been plagued with security problems the economics are such that many players in the IT market want to see the insecure WEP replaced with something more robust. While nothing in the future is certain, it seem a given that Wi-Fi will overcome its adolescent growing pains and mature into a reasonably secure and easy to deploy method of networking. . . .
While the growth of 802.11b wireless networking has been explosive, problems with security of data being transmitted have plagued the technology almost since its conception. Still in spite of its drawbacks 802.11b has some compelling reasons for its deployment, both by the consumer and in the enterprise. Those reasons include its low cost, its ease of deployment and the tremendous convenience that wireless networking offers.

As anyone knows who remembers the old Party Line telephone system, some times lack of good privacy can be lived with. Risk in general is discussed as well as basic ways to mitigate the risk. While Wireless Fidelity's (Wi-Fi) main security algorithm Wireless Encryption Protocol or WEP as it is commonly referred to remains relatively easy to crack, it is still better than nothing. This and other counter measures are discussed from basic residential wireless setups to more advanced ways the enterprise environment might consider for deploying wireless for transmission of important corporate data.

While data security, confidentiality, integrity and user or access point authorization has left much to be desired in Wi-Fi's past, the future of Wi-Fi seems, at least at present to be brighter. Perhaps the main reason for this has been Wi-Fi's tremendous growth, which makes many of IT's main players want to see it succeed. WPA, 802.11X and other technologies have support of such industry giants as Microsoft and Cisco.

So while secure wireless computing is still not a reality, it is a technology that merits close watch for the enterprise.

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