Intruder Alert! Recognizing WLAN Attacks And Locating Culprits

During the exponential growth of wireless networks over the past few years, certain issues have become fairly obvious. The absolute need for network security, the detection of network intruders (hackers), and the importance of site analysis in network security issues.

Standard local area networks (LAN's) will always have one security feature that will never be afforded wireless local area networks (WLAN's). In order to break into a LAN, one must be physically connected to the network via a wire or cable. LAN security in the past was maintained with relative ease as the network was usually contained within the confines of a single building or campus.

After the growth of the internet had connected LAN's with each other throughout the globe, a different security issue arose. Anyone with a computer which had access to the internet had the potential of accessing any other computer on the internet. This led to securing corporate gateways with levels of roadblocks known as firewalls. These firewalls would prevent hackers from gaining access to enterprise critical data.