It’s unbelievable to imagine businesses who employ OWN (open wireless network) encryption  on their wireless networks; even worse, its hard to imagine those that do utilize encryption to journey into the realm of WEP, as the term ’security’ instantly becomes misleading. Take New York, for example, as businesses were recently ’surveyed’ by an independent security specialist commissioned by RSA.

The survey was performed not by mail or in person, as one would expect, but rather, using a laptop with scanning software to detect both broadcasting and non-broadcasting access points (APs) across 802.11a, b, and g frequencies.

Of all APs war-surveyed, 21% were identified as using no encryption at all, while 15% of APs were identified as business HotSpots.

The remaining 64% of APs belonged to businesses with secured networks; however, only 49% of those using encryption, actually implemented a strong form such as WPA. The remaining are plagued with deceivingly-secure WEP encryption.

“As we evolve toward a ‘wireless everywhere’ world, we are witnessing enormous leaps in wireless connectivity,” said Christopher Young, Vice President, Consumer and Access Solutions at RSA.

Young hits the mark, but drifts off by noting: “It is encouraging that almost half of all secured business access points are now using advanced forms of encryption.”

51% of businesses, with encrypted wireless networks, who rely on WEP for network security, is simply not encouraging; it’s disgusting.

In addition, 24% of business APs that use a form of security are still configured to their out-of-the-box settings, a mega no-no in the world of wireless security.

Related:

Entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 6:03 am under Security, Wi-Fi.

Read more entries by George Gardner.
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