Evaluating Network Security Strategies in Wireless Communication

This report delves into the crucial topic of network security within wireless communication, emphasizing the inherent vulnerabilities of unguided transmission mediums. It highlights the increasing importance of securing wireless networks in organizations, focusing on the need to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access and hacking. The report explores various threats, including rogue access points, weak security protocols, and denial-of-service attacks, and proposes several security strategies to mitigate these risks. These strategies include encryption using WPA2, strong password management for networking devices, disabling guest access, and regular firmware updates. Furthermore, the report discusses two fundamental approaches to wireless security: network segregation and the implementation of robust encryption and authentication controls, with a focus on the effectiveness of WPA and VPNs. It also addresses potential physical and network layer attacks, such as jamming, eavesdropping, IP spoofing, and TCP/UDP flooding. The report concludes by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy, acknowledging the limitations of encryption and the importance of a multi-layered security approach to protect wireless networks.

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Abstract— Network Security is an important
consideration for wireless communication and maintaining
the security of wireless communication network. Network
data security is in wireless communication is high priority
mainly because the transmission medium is unguided,
which makes it easier for the hackers to extract
information from the medium [6]. The use of wireless
networking in the organization is increasing and therefore
it becomes essential for the organizations to ensure proper
protection of the wireless network. This is because,
network security provides, protection of access, misuse and
hacking of the files stored in the computer network system
while its wireless transfer. An intruder can easily target a
wireless communication by making use of an antenna to
detect the signals and decode the messages that is being
transferred through the wireless medium. The importance
of network security therefore lies in the intention and need
of safeguarding the private and the confidential
information that is being transferred through a wireless
medium [4]. Therefore, the network security in an
organization remains the biggest concerns of setting up
and making use of a wireless connection in a network.
There are a number of factors behind the increase in
threats associated with the use of a wireless medium. One
of the leading factors is that the use of air waves as a
communicating medium makes it accessible to public. This
access makes the wireless communication process
vulnerable to attacks from the hackers. There are a
number of ways by which an intruder can target and
launch an attack on the wireless communicating medium.
These includes, gaining an access to the rogue access
points, weak security of the network and the denial of
service attacks. The denial of service attack is however less
harmful as with this attack, the hackers can only prevent
the legitimate users from accessing the network but cannot
fetch any data from the network. Use of a rogue access
point can be described as access of the network by a
person who is not authorized to access it. This can be done
by setting up a false access point with an intention to
eavesdrop the communication in the network. This
therefore is dangerous as the confidential information that
is communicated through a particular network can be
easily accessed by the intruder. Therefore it is essential to
ensure that the companies adopt various security strategies
that can possibly help the organization in facing and
eliminating the issues associated with the use of wireless
network for communication [2]. This paper will evaluate
the different security strategies that a company might
undertake in order to ensure that the communication
channel is not compromised. There are certain basic
strategies that can be undertaken by the organization. One
of the basic security strategies that an organization can
undertake is encryption. Encryption is one of most
important security strategies that a company should
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undertake in order to ensure secure communication
through a wireless network. The encryption in the wireless
network can be done through WPA2 networking protocol
as it allows only an authorized member to access the
network. This network security protocol (WPA2) governs
one of the most basic and certain necessary security
elements such as user IDs, passwords and IP management.
Without the use of proper encryption, the security of the
wireless network of an organization can be compromised
[5]. Apart from encryption, it is necessary to safeguard the
associated networking devices such as routers and modems
with strong password so that gaining an access to the
network becomes difficult. The passwords should however
be difficult to guess so that any intruder fails to get easy
access to such devices associated with a wireless network.
The next strategy that can be used by the organizations in
order to ensure proper network security in wireless is
preventing any guest access to the network. Providing an
access to guest networking often turns out to be vulnerable
for a network and therefore it is necessary for an
organization to turn off any guest browsing. Another
important strategy to ensure data security protection to
the network is to update the firmware in regular interval
so that the network devices are installed with up to date
network security protocols [1]. This will make it difficult
for the hackers to access the network or get access to the
network communication. Ensuring wireless security
strategies mainly include two fundamental approaches
which include, acknowledging and isolating the network
from the rest of the network so that it becomes less
vulnerable to attacks Alternatively, the wireless network
can be made secure by enforcing proper encryption and
authentication control in the network so that any
unauthorized member fails to have an access to a
particular wireless network, which in turn ensures proper
security in the network. The first approach mainly focuses
on segregation so that even one part of the network gets
hacked the other networks of the organization remains
safe [3]. However, one of the major concerns associated
with this approach is that it does not provide actual
protection to the wireless network but only ensure that the
wired part of the network remains safe from the attack.
The second approach provides an appropriate security and
protection to the information that is exchanged through
the wireless network of an organization. Wi-Fi protected
access can also be considered in this case as one of the most
useful strategies for ensuring security in a wireless
network. WPA makes use of temporal key integrity
protocol to ensure proper protection of the wireless
network. The physical layer attacks on the wireless
communication network include jamming and
eavesdropping while that in network layer includes IP
spoofing, IP hijacking and smurf attack. The attacks the
wireless network might face in transport layer include
TCP flooding, UDP flooding and CP sequence prediction
attack. Therefore it becomes mandatory to ensure proper
Network security in wireless communication Network
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security in wireless network. The strategies that are
proposed provide a good solution for proper network
security. However, it becomes essential to evaluate the
advantages and disadvantages of each of the strategies that
has been proposed for the wireless network in order to
ensure whether the strategies proposed will actually work
or not. Encryption and authentication can ensure
protection against the unauthorized access to the wireless
network but may not provide adequate protection against
the malware attack, SQL injection, cross site scripting and
FTP bounce. Another disadvantage of encryption is that it
becomes quite expensive and often becomes overburden to
the IT staff. Preventing any rogue access point is another
strategy that can be employed by the organizations in
order to ensure that any unauthorized access to the
network is prevented. It is essential for the organization to
plan proper strategies to ensure protection of the wireless
network. Network security mainly consists of policies and
practices for proper monitoring and ensuring secure use of
wireless network. The research study evaluates the
strategy that will ensure protection of the network and the
communication in the wireless network. One of the
strategies that can be implemented for ensuring proper
protection in the wireless network is making use of virtual
private network [4]. This is because the use of VPN
ensures a proper secure channel of communication so that
the confidential information can be easily communicated
through the medium. A VPN channel is established by
making use of software on both the ends of tunnel and this
tunnel helps in proper encryption and decryption of the
data stream. The VPN can be used within the internal
network of the organization mainly on the firewall and the
other security server of the data center. The VPN coupled
with encryption and authentication helps in secure data
access across the organization. The intruders are not able
to get an access to the information that is shared through a
virtual private network. Therefore, the use of virtual
private network is one of the most significant strategies
that ensure proper security of wireless communication [7].
Ensuring security in a wireless network is essential as
transmission of the data through this medium unguided
and therefore is very much vulnerable to any attacks.
Apart from VPN, encryption is another strategy that can
be adopted by an organization for ensuring proper access.
However, the weaknesses associated with the WEP
encryption technique should be addressed and for that
WPA2 encryption technique is recommended for the
organization. The research study aims at evaluating the
advantages as well and the disadvantages associated with
the proposed strategies.
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