When asked to rate the importance of alternative WLAN security strategies for their sites, our respondents said the technologies of greatest importance are VPN/IPsec and firewall segmentation (both 5.4). The least important technology is Cisco’s LEAP (3.4). The remaining technologies—802.11i, 802.1x, WEP and WPA—all received scores between 4.5 and 4.6. This tells us that though there is interest in emerging wireless security standards, the majority is most comfortable with tried-and-true security systems.
We also asked respondents to rate the importance of seven 802.1x authentication protocols, including EAP-FAST, EAP-MD5, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, LEAP and PEAP. All the choices received average ratings between 4.0 and 4.1—which we interpret as meaning most respondents know EAP is important but don’t really have a clear understating or strong opinion on the alternative authentication types. Although EAP was designed to support alternative authentication, the existence of so many options causes confusion. This supports our hunch that it’ll be some time before 802.1x is widely implemented.
To assess readers’ hot buttons, we asked respondents to express their level of agreement with a range of somewhat provocative statements about WLAN security. There was strong disagreement with our suggestions that WLAN security is no different than wired LAN security; that the seriousness of wireless LAN security problems has been exaggerated by the media; and that an organization should be willing to trade off a little security for the benefits of WLANs. The highest level of agreement–by far—was expressed for our statement that robust security should be an integral element of WLAN infrastructure and shouldn’t require third-party systems. Readers also agree that sometimes you have to deploy proprietary features to achieve security and that politics has stalled the security standards process.
Finally, we found it interesting that more than 57 percent of respondents have received a request from a visitor to their facility for wireless network access. Guest access is clearly a growing need and carries with it a requirement for granular security controls.
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