Extending WPA security through mobile VPN solutions

When creating and investing in a wireless security strategy, it’s extremely important to analyze the current situation and determine the desired lifetime of the proposed solution.

Wireless-fidelity-protected access 2 (WPA2) is an enhanced version of WPA, which was created as an improvement to the wireless equivalent privacy (WEP) standard.

WPA is the official 802.11i standard that was ratified by the IEEE in June 2004. WPA can be configured to use the advanced encryption standard (AES) rather than the temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP).

WPA is generally accepted as an interim step toward WPA2 for managing some risks discovered with the WEP standard. But WEP and WPA are just minor obstacles for determined hackers.

Specifics of a VPN solution
A mobile virtual private network (VPN) solution provides a typical VPN class of security—with certificates for authentication, the AES, secure hash algorithm 1 (SHA 1) integrity checks, and other product-specific security functions. The difference between WPA2 and a mobile VPN solution is that the latter offers mobile functions such as secure roaming and transaction recovery. Mobile VPN solutions are designed for any type of wireless network technology; besides 802.11 networks, they can function on UMTS 3G, CDMA EV-DO, Wi-Max and any future TCP/IP network.

It’s crucial to understand that a mobile VPN solution can always work in conjunction with WPA2 on an 802.11 network, but WPA2 is obviously not available for any other technology.