Avoid Wi-Fi 'false positives'
Recently, a reader reported being forced to disable intrusion-prevention monitoring within shared, multi-tenant locations because the wireless scanning system was generating a confusing abundance of red herrings, or “false positives,” from neighboring access points.
The thought of anyone forced to turn off security caused my anxiety level to spike. It turns out that economics preclude the use of a third-party overlay monitoring system at the reader’s company, which opted instead for a combination access point (AP)/scanning system built by its Wi-Fi systems vendor. This is a pure example of the “insurance policy” nature of network security, which boils down to balancing how much you invest with the potential impact of a compromise to your organisation.L33tdawg: If you'd like to learn first hand on how to attack and defend your own wireless network, be sure to sign up for the hands-on War Driving Kuala Lumpur training that we're conducting in June. There are only about 12 seats remaining, so do sign up early. Registrants will get a free seat to HITBSecConf2006 - Malaysia.
