9.15 Weaknesses in Existing Security Solutions

Although the 802.11 standard has been found to be fundamentally insecure , it is an evolving standard that tries to meet the demands of a user community that grows more sophisticated and demanding with each passing day. The IEEE 802.11i group has been meeting regularly to develop new solutions to these well-known security weaknesses. Standards bodies move at a snail 's pace, and building consensus from both the vendor and user communities takes significant time and effort. Gaining acceptance for the most appropriate solution to the 802.11 vulnerabilities is difficult even in the best of circumstances. In order for 802.11 devices and software to be standards compliant and interoperable across multiple vendor products, tradeoffs of functionality against security weaknesses must be made and accepted.

Proprietary solutions may solve functionality issues at the cost of interoperability, and their deployment will not be compliant with 802.11i standard networking products of the future. There has been some progress with the standards bodies recently. They have approved some extensions that will help mitigate some of the weaknesses found with 802.11-based networks. Although no vendor would unconditionally guarantee the security of a wireless network when using their product, many have developed techniques to successfully limit the risks and decrease the probability of compromise. Security controls provided in the current 802.11 protocols do not do a very good job of eliminating the risks associated with deployment of wireless networks. Additional measures must be taken to ensure that corporate data residing on wired and wireless networks are not susceptible to an attack.