The continuous advances in the field of technology, coupled with the increase in performance and price benefits, wireless local area networks are rapidly becoming popular and deployed in home, public and office environments (Edney). The issue of employee productivity is no longer limited to only a particular fixed work location as well as a defined period of time, but rather, an employee can move from one location to another in the same office and still be able to access the company network wirelessly. The paper provides a discussion of the fundamental details of Wi-Fi technology and a set of security tips to ensure that end users are protected while surfing the Internet.

A Wireless Local Area Network, commonly known as Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) is a type of local area network (LAN) that makes use of high frequency radio waves (RF waves) that wires (Ethernet) to establish a communication channel between wirelessly network enabled devices. 802.11 wireless local area networks extend the capabilities of the 802.3 Ethernet Local area network infrastructure for the purpose of adding more connectivity options (Odom). In most cases, especially in public or large office environments, Wi-Fi uses a wireless access point (AP) which is a hardware device that enables wireless communication devices to connect through it to access a wireless network. Common devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), and mobile computers contain wireless adapters that establish communication with the wireless access point in order to surf the internet.

Access points are mostly connected to a wired network and they act as a data communication bridge between wired and the wireless devices. A small office or home office such as a Cisco Linksys router can also act as both a router and an access point (Odom). To enable wireless clients to establish communication with the appropriate access point, A Service Set Identifier (SSID) is configured to for the purpose of identifying the wireless network from the wireless networks. When the SSID is configured correctly, the clients with the correct SSID name are the only allowed to establish connection and communicate with the router or the access points. In relation to Wi-Fi security, the SSID functions as a single shared password between the wireless clients and the access points.

Wi-Fi uses the Open System Authentication as the default authentication protocol for the 802.11 standard. The protocol is made of simple authentication request that contains the station ID and an authentication reply with success or failure data. Both stations are considered authenticated mutually when the authentication is successful (Rackleyv). In addition, it can be utilized with the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) protocol for the purpose of providing enhanced security during communication. WEP is utilized for data encryption purposes when the client is associated and authenticated. Any wireless client is able to send its station ID to attempt to establish connection with the Access Point (Edney). To provide authentication of the Wi-Fi network, a Shared Key Authentication is to provide authentication. It is a standard challenge and reply mechanism that uses a shared secret key and WEP to for authentication purposes. Upon the encryption of the challenge text with WEP with using the secret shared key, the authenticating client returns the encrypted challenge text for verification by the access point.

Authentication is considered successful when the access point decrypts a similar challenge text. The Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) Protocol is one of the basic security features of the Wi-Fi standard, with the intention of providing confidentiality over the wireless network through encryption of information that is sent over the network (Miller). However, a major key scheduling shortfall has been realized in WEP and therefore it is currently considered to be unsecure since the WEP key can be easily cracked within a short period hence it is not advisable to use WEP unless there is a more secure mechanisms available.

Another wireless security protocol used for securing Wi-Fi connections is the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). The protocol is designed to fix and address the common security issues in WEP (Rackley). The function of the WPA is to provide users with an increased level of assurance that their data is well protected and secured by the use of Temporary Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) for the purpose of encrypting data (Miller). In addition, in order to improve user authentication in this protocol, 802.1x authentication has been introduced. A new wireless security protocol known as Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) which is based on the IEEE 802.11i enables authorized users to access the wireless device. The protocol contains features that support strong cryptography such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), key management, stronger authentication control for instance Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), data integrity and reply attack protection (Edney). TKIP was developed to utilize with WPA while AES, which is a stronger algorithm was developed to be used with WPA2. Moreover, some devices may allow WPA to function together with AES while others may only allow WPA2 to function with TKIP. However, a vulnerability was discovered in TKIP in 2008 where an attacker can decrypt small packets of data and input arbitrary data into the Wi-Fi network hence, TKIP is no longer regarded as an implementation which is secure.

In a nutshell, Wi-Fi has been widely deployed in homes, public places, and office environment. Wi-Fi offers flexibility, and scalability than the traditional Ethernet connections. Wi-Fi uses radio frequencies for communication between the wireless devices. Wi-Fi security is a vital aspect to consider when implementing the connection. Wi-Fi makes of several standards and protocols for authentication such as Open System Authentication, Wired Equivalent Privacy, Shared Key Authentication, Wi-Fi Protected Access, Temporary Key Integrity Protocol, and Advanced Encryption Standard. It is recommended to ensure that the Wi-Fi network is well secured.