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Businesses failing to protect wireless networks

A worryingly large number of businesses are placing themselves at heightened risk of online security breaches by neglecting to secure their wireless local areas networks (LANs), it has been revealed.

Research carried out by Enterprise Mobility Solutions, an arm of the Motorola telecoms group, found that just over half of all larger businesses are currently using the same security measures for both wired and wireless networks.

What's more, less than a third of those polled were found to be using any form of wireless intrusion prevention system, while 51 per cent admitted that their employees may regularly send sensitive data over completely unsecured LANS, such as those found in cafes.

Amit Sinha, chief technologist of Motorola Enterprise Wireless LAN, commented: "Education is vital to improving wireless network security. Wireless introduced vulnerabilities in the corporate network that traditional security architectures cannot mitigate.

"A layered approach to securing the airspace that comprises of strong authentication and encryption built on industry standards such as WPA2-Enterprise along with 24/7 wireless monitoring and intrusion prevention is required."

Just last month, a separate study carried out by the Ponemon Institute found that the majority of employees leaving a workplace take corporate data with them.

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