Defining The Wireless Security Problem

Summary

Excerpt From Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Part 1 Webinar
CTO Dr. Brett Walkenhorst Elaborates on Defining The Wireless Security Problem.
Dr. Brett Walkenhorst, CTO, talks about the complexity of network infrastructures, the existence of different networked devices, including ones that might be unknown or illegal, and the overall problem of wireless security in the video below. Find out more about the importance of fixing wireless network vulnerabilities in order to protect corporate infrastructure.

Video Transcript

Let's talk a little bit about the wireless security problem at the highest level to help motivate the need for looking at Wi Fi vulnerabilities specifically. So we have in our homes, in our offices, anywhere you go, really, that has network services of any kind. You have some network devices, some server side, some client side, and You understand how it You understand how it's connected.

You have diagrams that depict this interconnectivity, and you're managing all of these devices properly. You have monitoring going on on an ongoing basis. I would imagine your network is more complicated than what I'm showing here. But just to get it on a slide, show you the idea, we have a very simple construct, and and we think, okay.

We've got it all figured out. And and that may be true to some extent, but turns out and I can say this with high confidence because as we've deployed our monitoring solution in various customers' facilities, we inevitably find things that they didn't know existed. So there's other stuff hanging off of your core network that you may not even be aware is there.

This can include things like vendor equipment that was put in by the vendor without knowledge of the IT department, shadow IT equipment possibly put in by well meaning employees just trying to get work done. It could be industrial control systems that maybe we're aware of, but maybe they don't support endpoint agent monitoring.

Could also be any number of bring your own device kinds of devices. This could be cellular backhaul, hot spots. It could be cell phones, wearables, all kinds of medical equipment. There's lots of stuff that comes into our facilities all the time that in some form or fashion has the ability to connect into our core network.

And that may cross protocols, but the fact is that there is a path to connect them. And they represent through their wireless interfaces an attack surface that is broader and probably more vulnerable than we often realize. So again, attempting to motivate the need for awareness of the wireless domain, the vulnerabilities are very real.

We have here just an example of research from the CDE database. So over two thousand CVEs have been published related to different wireless protocols. And as you can see, the trend in the last few years is not a healthy one. So this is a problem that is is gaining increased awareness within the community.

And there's very real data to suggest that vulnerabilities are not getting any better. Wireless is there. Wireless is vulnerable. And just to put a finer point on it, wireless devices are everywhere. I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but there's tens of billions of them worldwide, and their presence continues to grow.

These devices communicate with each other using electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light. They penetrate physical objects. And so basically, we've got ones and zeros flying around us that contain data we would like to protect, may not always be able to due to the vulnerabilities, and they're flying around invisibly.

We don't see these electromagnetic waves. So the problem of ubiquity, vulnerability, and penetration makes this a very real problem for corporate network infrastructure. And the invisibility makes it a problem perspective of being able to secure it, especially in light of concepts like the zero trust paradigm. We can't monitor and secure what we can't see.

So again, just to help motivate the need for bringing visibility to this invisible attack surface, hopefully you can see that at a high level.