Isolating and Securing Wireless LANs

Wireless LAN technology (hereafter referred to as 802.11b for 802.11b and 802.11a standards) is one of the more talked about technologies available and thus one of the most wanted. Chances are that some executive in your organization has read about it in some glossy magazine and is hot to have it implemented. It is important to stress to management to move slowly and implement this technology carefully. Wireless technology is not secure and may open a big can of worms. In fact it touches all three fundamental pillars of Information Security: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Administrators and IT security professionals are challenged to build secure foundations for the above pillars when using 802.11b wireless technologies without limiting the beneficial functionality it provides. This paper intends to expand upon some of the concepts already put forth by Lee Elmendorf's paper, 'Wireless Networks: Panacea or Next Hacker's Playground' [1] and show how you may create a secure wireless Ethernet network.