How secure are wireless LANs?
Unfortunately, standards-based wireless LAN technology is very insecure. Since data traverses the airwaves, network data is susceptible to eavesdropping by anyone within the wireless LAN area. The wireless LAN can often extend outside of the university’s physical premises. For this reason, the wireless LANs are inherently not trusted and users must take extra precautions to ensure the privacy of their data and security of their hosts. Information Services strongly urges wireless LAN users to make use of secure network applications such as SSH and SSL. Using TELNET, FTP and HTTP without encryption is strongly discouraged. Information Services is deploying wireless LANs in as secure a fashion as possible.
