How Safe Is Wireless Technology?
As you will may have seen on the rest of this site, wireless technology is now used by all of us, everyday. Even if we don't realise it. Life without wires now is pretty much unimaginable, but with this new found freedom come some problems, and the biggest problem by far has been security. In this article we will look at how secure wireless technology keeps us safe and why we need it so much.
In the early stages of wireless capabilities, it was used mostly for listening to the radio, and so security was not really a problem to consider. No one is ever likely to try and intercept a public radio station, and no one is going to send private information over a public transmission. The only exception to this rule was the use of wireless technology for military purposes. In this case messages would have to be coded before they were sent as there was no way to stop the enemy intercepting your message. But let's move on a few years. Today we transmit personal data all the time over the internet. Many of us even access our bank accounts on-line hand out our credit card numbers. So, how can we be safe in doing this?
Almost all types of secure transactions now use a technology known as SSL. SSL or Secure Socket Layer works by encrypting the data you send. This data is only un-encrypted when the intended recipient receives it. Therefore if anyone was to intercept this information they would only see lines of jumbled code instead of readable data. This process is relied on all over the world now and is known to be safe and secure. But now that more and more of us are connecting to the internet wirelessly, how do we stop this information being intercepted before it is encrypted and sent to the recipient?
Hundreds of thousands of people now own a laptop. With the use of wireless hotspots, we can now use our laptops to connect to the internet when we are away from home. Perhaps in a hotel, library, restaurant, or even a park bench. These wireless hot spots are an internet connection that can be shared by anyone within range and are a fantastic invention. But, there's no pleasure without pain, and this wonderful invention has brought with it a big problem. Secure wireless defences were not really up to scratch when hot spots first began to appear around the world. So even though our data was secure once it was being sent through the world wide web, there very little to stop criminals intercepting our private data before this encrypting stage occured. Secure wireless technology has improved recently, but in my opinion there is a long way to go. By using firewalls and various other methods we can stop the majority of hackers, but the use of wireless hot spots, is in my opinion not yet safe! I have nothing against using these hot spots but my advice is to use them simply for browsing the web, and not to send secure data. If you do see something you want to buy, or you need to acces your bank account online, then wait until you are at home or in a secure environment.
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