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As many business owners have already seen, the prevalence of laptops in the mobilized workforce has introduced wireless technologies in both the home and office environments. Wireless can add significant value to your organization by allowing employees to move freely throughout the office with their mobile devices and providing access for visitors. However, the addition of wireless technology, or WiFi, in (or outside of) your corporate environment introduces new security challenges. It’s more difficult to contain the wireless signal within the four walls of your office or home, and a poorly configured setup can unintentionally provide full access to your servers and data. Just think: A hacker may be sitting in the hallway outside your office or a nearby parking lot all weekend long with access to your network, never setting off a single alarm or breaching the physical boundaries of your office. Once on your network, the attacker can help himself to corporate files and customer data. Adding even greater risk to your corporate network security are poorly configured home wireless networks, be they yours or your employees’. Remote users should be considered an extension of your office, and home wireless devices can add just as much risk as devices in your office.
Choose the Right Technology
Deciding on the right wireless equipment can be tough. Wireless technology can often seem like alphabet soup to the non–tech savvy. Wireless equipment vendors such as Bluesocket, Cisco, Aruba Networks and Meru provide ranges of high-quality equipment that can be used in small offices with one or two access points as well as in enterprises with thousands of access points across their corporate campuses. These industry-leading vendors provide access points and wireless equipment capable of handling a greater number of users with a better quality of service than consumer-grade products for your home. For home and home office applications, recommend that your employees use Linksys, D-Link and Netgear because they provide suitable security at a lower cost than enterprise-level wireless equipment.
So how prevalent is wireless in the corporate landscape? I invite you to do a simple nonscientific study. Using tools freely available on the internet walk one square block around your office building with a laptop running Netstumbler (netstumbler.com). I did just a few months back in preparation for a wireless seminar my company was hosting and found the results very interesting. One square block in Manhattan revealed more than 115 unique wireless access points. Roughly 50% were using no encryption and more than 10% had default settings right out of the box. These results are even more intriguing if you consider that my office is in a busy commercial district of Manhattan.
Test the WiFi In Your Neighborhood
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