Firms urged to shore up their Wi-Fi defences

As health fears over Wi-Fi multiply, the security health of networks is also under scrutiny

IT security testing and consultancy service vendor NTA Monitor has warned that corporate networks could still be haemorrhaging critical business data. The warning follows recent tests involving the passive monitoring of network traffic in cafés in the City of London.

“For a malicious user wishing to connect to a corporate network, the City [of London] is an ideal location,” said Roy Hills, NTA’s technical director. “By sitting in a café with a laptop they’re pretty inconspicuous and probably out of sight of the office whose network they’re connecting to.”

Hills advised businesses faced with locking down wireless devices to implement and update mobile secure configuration policies – not only for laptops but also for all other corporate mobile devices with wireless access. Secondly, he argued that offsite internet access has to be seen as untrustworthy, so system administrators should securely configure all laptops and change default settings before allowing them to be used offsite. Finally, firms should isolate wireless networks and use strong encryption.

Meanwhile, the debate over the safety of children who use wireless networks continues.

Professor Lawrie Challis, head of the Mobile Phone Safety Research Committee, has urged school pupils to keep Wi-Fi-enabled laptops at a safe distance from their bodies. He said a child resting one on their lap could get a dose of microwave radiation similar to that received by a mobile phone user. However, Mark Gilthorpe, professor of Statistical Epidemiology at Leeds University, said that to design a study to pick up the damaging effects on children would be very difficult.