Subtitles of the Movie

Now let's discuss some of the wireless security issues prevalent in wireless networks. Now, unfortunately wireless networks, with all their great technology, mobility and some of the other advantages they provide, they're not immune from some of the same security issues that plague wired networks. They still have the unfortunate ability to suffer from misuse, from hackers, from information leakage. Hackers, uh, can still attack wireless networks and actually, unfortunately, in many more easier ways than they do wired networks. So essentially, wireless networks can suffer from violations of confidentiality, integrity and availability of their information, just like wired networks. Unfortunately, wireless networks are at additional risk because wireless networks, as we mentioned briefly before, are not physically contained or physically closed. They're not separated from the outside world. Their medium is the airwaves and airwaves are all over the place, unlike a wired, this is a defined, confined space between two MAChines or within a network. So you don't actually have to walk into a building and sneak into the closet and plug into the switch to access a wired network. You can sit out in your car in the parking lot in front of a business and theoretically access their entire network. Because of the open nature of wireless networks, that makes it much more easier to circumvent traditional security devices, such as firewalls, border routers, uh, and so forth. Why go through the firewall when you can pick up the wireless network signal and go directly to the wireless access point and start accessing open shares and things on computers. It's even possible to directly connect to clients and other resources inside the network if a wireless network is not securely configures. So your firewall becomes a moot point at that, at that, uh, point. Unfortunately, also because a lot of businesses integrate wireless networks and wired networks, you could actually use a wireless network as an entry point into a protected and secured wired network that sits behind a firewall. So now no longer do you have to actually plug in, once again, to a switch port or access it across Internet. You can actually sit out in the parking lot and access those resources on the wired network by accessing the wireless network if there's no security built in the way it should be. All this tells you that transmission security becomes far more important than ever before. It's very important in wired networks, but it's even more important with wireless networks because of the nature of how the transmission media works in wireless networks. Now, how do we combat some of these security issues? Well, we use encryption and we'll talk about WEP and WPA and so forth when we talk about wireless security a little bit more and access control, access security, which comprise authentication, authorization and accounting. Those things probably play the largest role in securing wireless networks. Unfortunately, it's some of the things that are most often neglected when administering and securing a wireless network. We'll cover those more in depth when we talk about wireless security.