It’s a great idea to have employees working from home via wireless connections. Unless, of course,
hackers break into those employees’ wireless LANs — and potentially compromise your entire enterprise network.
Researchers say it’s way too easy to break into most home WLANs because most users typically leave their wireless routers configured with the default SSID, administrative password, and unencrypted settings. That makes the home WLAN a welcome mat into the user’s corporate network.
"It’s scary how vulnerable these networks are," says Ken Baylor, director of market development and strategic alliances for McAfee. In some recent war-driving tests, McAfee found half of home wireless LANs were unprotected and unencrypted, Baylor says. And few enterprises are paying attention to their users’ home WLANs.
The safest bet is a secure VPN connection for your users, researchers say. Even a well-secured home WLAN with a WPA/WPA2 encryption and a unique SSID is still not as safe as a secure VPN link. That’s because the wireless encryption ends where the wired network begins. Dark Reading - Desktop Security - Hacking Home WLANs - Security News Analysis
From around the Web
- Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Latest Release Schedule
- Vista SP2: What is inside?
- NetWitness releases free version of security software
- Three Reasons Why Users Won’t Buy Into Security
- Automated security testing & its limitations
- Google Wants to Preinstall Chrome Browser on PCs
- Mozilla warns of Firefox China add on
- Firefox No Longer an Automatic Defense Against Browser Drive Bys
- Google patches Chrome file stealing bug
- Apple plays catch up, adds anti fraud safeguard to Safari
- Researchers find vulnerability in Windows Vista
- How to Use Network Behavior Analysis Tools
- The insider security threat in IT and financial services
- Windows 7 security: An overall improvement?
- Windows 7 UAC could be less of a nag