A Critical Analysis of the Efficiencies of Emerging Wireless Security Standards Against Network Attacks

Abstract

Given the emergence of the wireless technologies in the recent past, their utilities in both home and industrial applications have taken new shapes in various dimensions. Along with this progressive growth is the substantial emergence of the network attackers as they are finding new bases and platforms for launching network attacks. Existing wireless security standards are not persistent enough under the lights of the emerging malicious attackers. Since the first implementation of wireless networks, it was noticed that the original WEP encryption methods had flawed security which led to the industry searching for new solutions to secure wireless communications. Whilst enterprises were able to take advantage of these developments, many home users were unaware of the dangers posed by weak wireless encryption and are continued to employ vulnerable encryption. Thus it has become a necessity to explore and reveal the current security trends and their efficiencies against the present form of the network vulnerabilities from time to time. To this end, this paper delves into the background of weak encryption protocols and identifies the risks and countermeasures for protecting wireless networks against attacks. This research also includes the analysis on the data collected from scanning the wireless networks in the city of Derby in the United Kingdom. An important outcome of this research work is the critical evaluation of the security standards along with the recognition of the encryption protocol patterns in existence from 2006 to 2015.