A great piece on Wi-Fi security by Chris Lyttle. He is talking about WIPS, a system that attempts to detect and crowd out rogue access points. WIPS is quite controversial in the Wi-Fi space, and even more so among users who are shocked when their MiFi type devices stop working! For example, see John Herbert’s post regarding a science fair project going awry thanks to WIPS!
I’ve been thinking for a long time now about why it is that most of my customers seem not concerned about wireless intrusion detection/prevention systems. There are most definitely attacks out there that can cause problems to wireless networks and clients. I have many times talked to people about the advantages of having a system like this in place, but still they are unconvinced as to the value of those systems, apart from people that have an obvious need to have tight control over their WLAN such as banks. Still it puzzled me that the focus was on detecting rogues on the network, not other types of attacks. I attempted to talk about the wider value gained from a WIPS system, such as better performance metrics from monitoring the WLAN more closely. Even when it was offered for free it seemed that this functionality wasn’t that important as it was hardly used or even monitored.
Read the whole post over at Chris Lyttle’s blog: WIPS will disappear
