Common Security Threats of Wireless Technology

Write about the Wireless Network Technology and Preventive Techniques.

In this era of new technologies, both wired and wireless technologies are used in different devices according to the users’ requirements. Although wireless technology is modern and considered more reliable than wired technology but wireless technique has introduced some security threats that were not heard before. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are wide-spread examples of wireless technology. These are quicker and easier to access than wired devices. A mobile network enables devices to stay connect to the network without any wired which is really smooth. Wireless technology offers benefits of portability and flexibility to its users in their communication. Moreover, it also increases productivity of the devices within lower installation costs. With these benefits of wireless technology, it also causes some issues of security of information for users of mobile devices. The purpose of this research report is to embark on security issues of wireless technologies and its prevention methods. Without using some significant prevention methods it is not possible to get rid of this problem of violation of privacy and security of data.

The security of the wireless networks is violated in different ways by cyber criminals. The most common security threats of the wireless technology are unauthorized access of the information by using malicious entities, poor use of cryptography, denial of service attack, an improper synchronization of data and other harmful virus attacks. To perform security violation activities, hackers use different methods such as virus attacks, DDoS attacks and network intrusion attack and phishing and identity theft. All these methods are so much vulnerable and can damage whole database. In virus attack, harmful viruses such as ransomware etc. are injected into the wireless network (SearchMobileComputing, 2018). A single infected node or computer in a network can spread virus into the all other nodes of that particular network and can corrupt the information which is stored in the form of files and folders (Karygiannis & Owens, 2002). An important way which is used to insert virus into the network is a programming script and when this script executes then it slows down the network, restricts the access of information of the connected nodes to the wireless network and halts the functions that are performed by the users. On other side, DDoS attack is the distributed denial of service attack and it is implementing by the hackers to take the control over the main network and stops the other connected nodes to access information from that network. Moreover, phishing attack or identity theft is the main security threat of the wireless technology. Through this attack, hackers try to obtain the personal information of users in an unauthorized way who are connected with wireless network. Later on, this information is used to screw that person. Therefore, in this way, wireless network security is violated by the hackers considerably. At this stage, it is necessary to resolve this problem by taking some quick actions. The next segment of this report focuses on the prevention technologies of wireless network security.

Prevention Technologies of Wireless Network Security

At the developers’ end of the wireless technology, various new and relevant methods are found to overcome the security issues of this technology. These methods intervene an appropriate use of the encryption technique, use of anti-virus, network monitoring techniques and use of firewall. Encryption technique is helpful to hide the sensitive data and network addresses from the cyber criminals. Actually, this technique changes the data into an unknown format which is difficult to identify by the hackers. Additionally, for wireless network security some key standards can be also be used such as EAP, EAS and PKMv2. Here EAP is used for authentication of the network device and user (Dedo, 2004). It is considered as Internet Engineering Task Force and EAP stands for Extensible Authentication Protocol. On flip side, EAS i.e. Advanced Encryption Standard is used to encrypt the network traffic (Hindawi.com, 2018). EAS data encryption standard has potential to prevent network attacks like man-in-the-middle by using periodic mechanism of the transition keys. In case of EAS encryption, only sender and receiver have knowledge about the encryption code and key and no middle person is included in it that can cause severe problem. On other side, PKMv2 is known as Privacy Key Management Protocol Version 2 (Radio-electronics.com, 2018). This standard of data encryption is used as a key management protocol for authoring and encrypting exchange of crypto keys that are used for both broadcast and multicast traffic. These data encryption standards of wireless network are used for better security and reliability of it. Moreover, these standards also have potential to provide various mechanisms to obtain high level security. All the security measures of wireless technology are secured enough and can never be deemed or weaken. In this way, confidential information can be kept hide from the attackers and a heavy loss can be stopped. Another useful technique is the use of anti-virus (Trends, Network & Scheck, 2018). Anti-virus software is useful to scan the whole network and its connected nodes to identify the virus or bugs in it. If any virus will be found in the wireless network then it generates an alert for user. That is why, antivirus are mostly preferable to install into system. Anti-virus like Norton, Kaspersky and other powerful anti-virus can help users to protect network and systems. But one thing that need to be kept in mind is the periodically update of anti-virus and patching software. Besides this, network monitoring techniques must be used at the developers’ end to identify the potential bugs and errors into network. To do this, network monitoring software must be used. In case of wireless network which is less secured than wired network, there an appropriate monitoring is required. Next key solution is firewall which is effective enough to protect the network security. A fully patched system behind the firewall is considered to be a best way of defending networks from virus attack. It is basically an in-built software in an operating system and it must be in on mode. Sometimes, it is seen that most of the computer users do not care about updating of their operating system which is an unprotected way to use the system. Due to this, outdated firewall is used by users which is not effective to provide proper security. Therefore, to maintain long term security of the wireless networks, systems and devises, an effective firewall should be used.

Reliability of Security Techniques for Wireless Network

These security techniques for wireless network are very much reliable that is why these are used in variety of areas where wireless technology is used. In business organizations, educational institutions, banks and in entertainment industry wireless network is used at large extent. In smartphones, wireless technology is used commonly for communication and transferring information to different users. Due to wireless network connections, it has become easier for business enterprises to execute a centralized approach by connecting different departments without using bunch of wires that are difficult to maintain. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be used in a small geographical area, so employees of different departments in an organization can easily communicate with each other with very less network interruption. Besides this, in educational institutions, wireless networks are easy to implement and through secured Wi-Fi connection all university’s departments can be connected. In this case, high level protection is required for wireless networks and it can be achieved with the help of prevention technologies such as anti-virus, firewall, network monitoring etc. The implementation of these preventive methods must be accurate otherwise positive outcomes cannot be obtained.

Wireless network security is not an easy task to maintain. There are several challenges that confronted by the wireless network users. This paragraph of research report emphasizes on some key challenges of the wireless network security. The first challenging factor is the appropriate controlling of network users that are frequently using wireless networks. Nowadays, an enormous amount of user deals with wireless networks. In this case, a large amount of information is sent and received from users over their wireless connection. This thing causes a serious concern for the IT developers to manage the multiple users on the wireless network at a time (Mareco, 2018). Furthermore, with increment of people, devices and applications, this problem is increasing frequently. Another challenging factor is to manage the wireless network at dense places where hundreds or thousands of users are using this network simultaneously and increasing network traffic. Hackers take advantage of this adverse condition and try to hack the hack the networks. Next key challenge is related to the development of advanced network security solutions that can secure wireless network. Today, hacking and phishing attacks are increasing continuously and to control this attack powerful solutions are required. Therefore, the development of this type of solutions is a challenge for wireless network developers (Leary, 2018).

Wireless network security is a wide area to research and several literature reviews are available related to this. I have also read a literature review on wireless network security and preventive techniques and in that article most of the concepts of wireless network are defined properly. But some gaps are also identified in the provided information. Here in this section of report, I would like to emphasize on some issues of wireless network security that are properly defined and other as well that consist of some gaps. The main issues of wireless network security that are properly addressed in this report are loss of confidentiality, loss of integrity and loss of network availability (DigitalTrends, 2018). These three security risks of wireless network are defined properly in literature review (Thehackernews.com, 2018). The reasons of occurring of these issues are mentioned in an appropriate way by using relevant examples (Healthcareitnews, 2018). That is why, these key security risks are easier to understand and resolve. On other side, some security issues are not addressed properly such as network congestion and protection of different network layers. The explanation about these security concerns is not given appropriately in the literature and some key points are discussed accurately. The problem of network congestion gives chance to network intruders to enter into the network and violate information. Besides this, network layers such as application layer, transport layer and secure socket layer etc. are responsible to transfer information from source to destination in a wireless network or wired network. That is why privacy maintenance is required of these network layers to large extent (Lab, 2018).

Application of Wireless Networks in Different Sectors

On the behalf of above discussion, I can say that the most critical issues of security are malware attacks and identity theft (Al-Janabi, 2018). The main reason behind this is the high level violation of the confidential information and the leakage of customers’ information due to these security threats. Moreover, in case of malware attacks it is difficult to identify the actual source of this attack and it becomes difficult to control it. In case of identity theft, customers are made fool by the hackers by using different tricks that are sometimes impossible to understand and customers provide their personal information to them. That is why, it is necessary for developers to be aware about these critical issues and use all potential methods to get prevention (Hern, 2018).

The identified gaps in the literature of security threats must be fulfilled by the literatures in future (Rouse, 2018). While doing research on any technology like wireless network and its security issues then each and every factor related to it should be described properly. Lack of information may lead to wrong decisions. Furthermore, in future developers must work on some high level technologies that can provide better security against vulnerable network problems. Therefore, in this way security and privacy extortions of wireless networks can be resolved in efficient ways (Jamiiforums.com, 2018).

Conclusion

To sum up, it can be said that wireless network security must be the prior concern for its developers and must be controlled appropriately as soon as possible. Nowadays, uses of wireless network and devices are increasing day by day. Therefore, it is mandatory to give satisfactory services to customers. Not only at developers’ end but also at users’ end security should be maintained by using some available key tools and techniques.

References

Karygiannis, T., & Owens, L. (2002). Wireless network security. NIST special publication, 800, 48. Access through https://all.net/books/standards/NIST-CSRC/csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-48/NIST_SP_800-48.pdf  

Mareco, D. (2018). 6 Challenges to Overcome When Deploying Campus-Wide Wireless Networks. Retrieved from https://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/6-challenges-to-overcome-when-deploying-campus-wide-wireless-networks

Hern, A. (2018). ‘All wifi networks’ are vulnerable to hacking, security expert discovers. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/16/wpa2-wifi-security-vulnerable-hacking-us-government-warns

Healthcareitnews. (2018). Study identifies top five wireless challenges. Retrieved from https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/study-identifies-top-five-wireless-challenges

Leary, M. (2018). The Top 3 Challenges for Wireless Networks in 2010. Retrieved from https://blogs.cisco.com/enterprise/the_top_3_challenges_for_wireless_networks_in_2010

Thehackernews.com. (2018). The Hacker News — Online Cyber Security News & Analysis: Wireless hacking. Retrieved from https://thehackernews.com/search/label/Wireless%20hacking

Hindawi.com. (2018). Green and Energy Harvesting Wireless Networks. Retrieved from https://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcmc/si/309758/cfp/

Dedo, D. (2004). Windows mobile-based devices and security: Protecting sensitive business information. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved from https://download.microsoft.com/documents/australia/security/summit/WhitePapers/Windows_Mobile-based_Devices_and_Security.doc  

Al-Janabi, S., Al-Shourbaji, I., Shojafar, M. and Shamshirband, S. (2018). Survey of main challenges (security and privacy) in wireless body area networks for healthcare applications.

Lab, K. (2018). Bluetooth Security Vulnerabilities -Kaspersky Daily. Kaspersky.com. Retrieved from https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/bluetooth-security/1637/

Radio-electronics.com. (2018). WiMAX Security | Authentcation Encryption | Radio-Electronics.Com. Retrieved from https://www.radio-electronics.com/info/wireless/wimax/security-encryption-authentication.php

SearchMobileComputing. (2018). What is WPAN (wireless personal area network)? – Definition from WhatIs.com. Retrieved from https://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/WPAN

Jamiiforums.com. (2018). Wireless network attacks and how to prevent them. Retrieved from https://www.jamiiforums.com/threads/wireless-network-attacks-and-how-to-prevent-them.180302/

Trends, S., Network, H., & Scheck, S. (2018). How Can You Prevent People from Using Your Wireless Network – Small Business Trends. Retrieved from https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/02/people-using-your-wireless-network.html

DigitalTrends. (2018). How to secure a wireless network. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-secure-a-wireless-network/

Rouse. (2018). Securing your wireless network: Preventing wireless security threats. Retrieved from https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tutorial/Securing-your-wireless-network-Preventing-wireless-security-threats