Mobile and Wireless News

Computerworld - Not enough being done about security

According to a new report by Jupiter Research, companies are not doing enough to secure their wireless LANs.
The report, released at Jupiter's 802.11 Planet in Boston, says only 48% are using technical solutions to secure their networks. Only 28% are using point-to-point VPNs and only 29% have begun to use 802.1x, a subset of the new 802.11i standard expected to be ratified later this year.
"Many enterprises rely purely on off-the-shelf solutions with basics such as WEP …" said Julie Ask, a Jupiter analyst. "Larger enterprises are more likely to rely on VPN's and 802.1x while enterprises of all sizes are equally likely to rely on WEP and restricted access available in most off-the-shelf products. Smaller enterprises are both less concerned about WLAN security and are taking fewer measures to ensure WLAN security."
Wire Equivalent Privacy has been widely seen as a failure in terms of providing security to wireless products and several papers have been published on how to crack it.
Jupiter's report, entitled "802.11 Security: Who is Listening to your Wi-Fi?" is available to Jupiter subscribers online. Jupiter Research is a division of Darien, Conn.-based Jupitermedia Corp.

Partnership aims at vertical markets

Intel Corp., Deloitte Consulting and Telispark Inc. all announced this week they were rolling out a mobile pipeline inspection and asset management package that covers hardware, software and consulting services.
The aim is tailor a product set to a specific industry and close the loop on the implementation and maintenance of the product. The current package is aimed at the oil industry and matches elements of Telispark's Mobile Enterprise 2.0, Intel's chipsets and Deloitte's consulting.
Analysts have said the package works by "going from the outside in." Other approaches to tying workers in the field back to their home base usually come from the platform side and have involved large projects that try to "push any application to any device over any network," Yankee Group analyst Eugene Signorini said earlier this year.
The Telispark system works by first finding out what information an employee needs and then locating the right application in the back end that has that information. "It is a unique approach," Signorini said. "They have taken a different approach than a lot of other companies."


802.11i standard sewn into WLAN print servers

Bielefeld, Germany-based SEH announced it will integrate 802.11i security features into its wireless LAN print servers.
802.11i is designed to bring greater security to 802.11 products and is expected to be ratified later thisyear.
In addition to 802.11i, SEH has said it will also implement Cisco's LEAP (Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) as well.
New servers will be shipped with the security enhancements, upgrades are available from SEH for those servers already shipped.

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