Can Wireless Networks Be Too Secure?
An interesting opinion piece over at Network Magazine wondering if adding too much security to WiFi is a bad thing. The writer is suggesting that part of the reason WiFi has been so successful is the lack of security – that made it easy for people to use unsecured hotspots all over the place. He’s afraid that with the “security backlash”, people might go too far in the other direction and harm the overall usefulness of WiFi. He makes an interesting point saying that while we have password protection for corporate networks and email, you don’t have the same protection on your phone or physical mail. This is true, but no one is going to use your phone system sitting in their car in your parking lot. More importantly, depending on how networks are set up, someone on your network then can get access to plenty of other materials – or view what you’re doing. A better argument might be that people might want to figure out ways to open up the bandwidth, but locking down the rest of their network.
