April 30, 2003

Wi-Fi Alliance drives improved WLAN security

"The Wi-Fi Alliance, guardian of 802.11 wireless networking interoperability, has announced the first set of products that meet its Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) security specification.

WPA, a subset of the 801.11i WLAN security specification, is set to replace the creaky Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) scheme used by wireless clients and base-stations to encrypt data to date. 802.11i is due to be ratified as a standard by the IEEE next year."

Hmmm, creaky- crackable, yes. Note that this is just an announcement, the actual products won't ship until next month. WPA is a good thing, it does require a firmware upgrade, but is compatible with existing WEP products. Good news for enterprises that have already invested in Wi-Fi products. 802.11i will require new hardware.

Posted by Diana at April 30, 2003 08:26 PM