How can an organization protect its employees and customers from Wi-Fi attacks such as Karma or man-in-the-middle (MiTM)? The convenience of public Wi-Fi drives people to connect to it in droves, but hackers can take advantage of the lax security practices of most public hotspots to steal people’s information. How can we stop these attacks before they happen?
In a recent article published in Cyber Defense Magazine Ryan Orsi, Director of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies, writes about the importance of automating wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPS) and wireless intrusion detection systems (WIDS) to detect, classify, and block hacking attempts quickly. Both systems are driven by compliance standards such as PCI DSS and HIPAA that outline requirements for identifying rogue (bad) access points within a network. Ryan explains some of the problems with WIPS and WIDS, such as false positives that create a lot of extra work for the systems’ human operators, and discusses new technologies that overcome these issues by classifying SSIDs more accurately.
Here is a brief excerpt from Ryan’s article:
“In the meantime, while organizations play Wi-Fi defense catch-up, how can the everyday consumer tell is a hotspot is secure? Unfortunately, they can’t…This is another reason why brands should use automated systems to help keep consumers safe when connecting to public Wi-Fi. The technology now exists to protect a Wi-Fi network and its users at a reasonable cost, with solutions that require low maintenance, helping reduce some of the major security issues facing organizations today.”
Read the full article by Ryan in Cyber Defense Magazine and watch out for Part Three of this series on how to protect a network from connected devices and IoT in Cyber Defense Magazine next month. If you haven’t already, you can read part one of this series here. Additionally, read more about How to Avoid FCC Wi-Fi Interference Fines with New WIPS Technology on Secplicity.