RSA Hotspot

RSA: Hotspot Security Improving

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 27th, 2008

Today, RSA announced the results of its annual Wireless Security Survey, which looks at the measures companies and individuals are taking – or not taking – to ensure that their wireless networks are secure.

One of RSA’s security experts recently trolled the streets of NYC, London and Paris to quantify the growth in wireless networking (both corporate and in-home) and to determine how secure these networks are. RSA says the results demonstrate how the cities have evolved over the years, where the wide-open security gaps are, as well as some fascinating geographical disparities. Highlights of the study include:

• Growth of Access Point (AP) Adoption — Paris is leading the way with access point growth jumping 543% to 4,481 since 2007 – London (the leader in sheer AP volume), jumped 72% while New York increased 45%.
• Advanced Security — Security continues to improve globally with Paris showing that 72% of all access points had advanced security. New York and London came in at 49% and 48% respectively
• Security of Business Access Points — 20% of London’s business access points are completely unprotected by any form of wireless encryption – down from 19% in 2007. While New York and Paris fair much better with only 3% of unprotected business access points in New York and 6% in Paris
• Security of Home Access Points – Home users are a bit more security savvy, Paris leads the way with 98% of home access points being encrypted – New York and London were close behind with 97% and 90% respectively

With Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) - the original wireless encryption standard - now discredited, the 2008 survey paid close attention to the types of encryption in-play, including Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) or WPA2. The WPA2 certification mark indicates compliance with an advanced protocol that implements the full 802.11i standard. Paris once again led the way, with 72% of access points (excluding public hotspots) found to be using advanced security.

Network World set up the largest public 802.11n test ever conducted. They invited all enterprise Wi-Fi vendors to supply eight 802.11n access points, along with controllers if needed. Four vendors took them up on the challenge: Aerohive, Bluesocket, Motorola and Siemens.

source : dailywireless.org