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WLAN Security Concerns Unfounded: 3Com |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 22 January 2008 |
Enterprises frightened of
deploying wireless networks may be worrying unnecessarily according to
a recent South Asia study by networking company 3Com which found that
security troubles are no more prevalent in organisations with or
without wireless networks.
The survey of 2,500 companies from
Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore has found
that organisations that have already moved to wireless networks
encounter little or no significant security issues at all.
More
than 40 per cent of respondents in the 3Com study had "deployed
wireless networks in selected areas" within their organisations and
have cited security as their most pressing concern, followed by network
reliability. However, the study revealed that the threats these
enterprises face do not vary greatly from the common viruses and worm
intrusions experienced by companies without wireless networks deployed.
"This survey debunks the commonly held belief that wireless networks are less secure than wired networks," said Peter Chai,
Vice President & General Manager (Asia Pacific), 3Com Corp.
"What's even more interesting is that some of these organisations did
not face any security threats and have actually found that security of
their networks have either improved or remained unchanged when they
moved to wireless."
The survey also indicated that security and
reliability concerns of enterprises polled are closely linked to the
use of consumer grade wireless networking equipment that is less secure
and has limited connectivity.
"In many cases, the use of
centrally controlled wireless architecture may actually improve network
security due to their ability to block rogue access points and enforce
better network admission controls,"Chai added.
Other
information gleaned from the survey contrasts the adoption rates from
country to country with Singapore leading the way on 21 per cent of
those surveying while 20 per cent of the Australian companies surveyed
had deployed wireless networks, Indonesia (10%), Malaysia (15%) and the
Philippines (11%) have some catching up to do.
The survey found that the education sector leads wireless adoption
across the region with 86 per cent having full or partial wireless
networks deployed, but for the most part there was little difference
between large and SMB in terms of adoption rate. The Government was the
second largest sector with 62 per cent, while the financial sector was
least keen to deploy wireless with close to 20 percent having no
immediate wireless plans.
"The financial services industry has
always been divided on the value of wireless networking. This is
largely due to their reluctance to expose sensitive financial
information over the air,"Chai noted.
While wireless networks
for email, messaging and Internet access are popular, there was little
interest in the adoption of WiFi for Voice over IP. In Singapore showed
the least interest with nearly half saying they have no wireless VoIP
plans, while Indonesia has the most number of organisations
already leveraging the technology.
"There is clearly a need among early and new wireless adopters,
especially manufacturers which constituted the largest number or
respondents in the survey, to go beyond email and apply more innovative
use of their existing wireless infrastructure for such high value
applications as location tracking, VoIP over wireless, salesforce
automation and CRM applications," saidChai.
3Com found the
majority of enterprises in the region are not up to date with wireless
technology trends, specifically the 802.11N standard with nearly half
of the respondents surveyed (mostly from Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Philippines), did not know about 802.11N. In all 34 per cent have heard
of the standard but did not know how it will affect their business.
The
survey also found that company size does not determine the VOIP over
wireless deployment decisions as organisations with one to 49 employees
and those with more than 500 workers are more open to the deployment
compared to organisations with number of staff in between.
Cost
benefits are the biggest drawer of VoIP over wireless LAN among SMBs.
"Smaller organisations have more open attitude towards VOIP and willing
to try more cost effective deployment such as combining consumer grade
wireless hardware and commercial VoIP software. These sectors are found
to be least concerned about security issues and limited wireless
coverage," said Chai.
Bigger organisations, on the other hand,
have fewer cost and management considerations in VoIP over wireless
LAN. "It will be simply a matter of running VoIP on top of their
existing infrastructure," he said.
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