Wireless is Coming to Hamilton

A while ago at the Meet the Mayor night at the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce I found out that the Wireless project is still a go in downtown Hamilton. Apparently it will cover a 4 kilometre downtown area allowing anyone with a wireless laptop, PDA or other wireless device free access to the Internet.

At the wireless wave presentation in 2005 the implementation was said to have been done by the end of 2006.

Let’s look at some of the potential security issues with this implementation from a small to medium and even possibly a large business point of view.

Scenario one:

If you have a business in the downtown area that has an office, your information could be at risk if you have any computers with wireless capability that plug into your company network. If the IT person has not properly secured your wireless equipment, then that equipment becomes the back door security leak. Someone could be listening in on your electronic communication and possibly steal your information. A disgruntled employee could also siphon information out, bypassing your internal network detection systems.

Our surveys show that 90% of all wireless equipment configurations are unsecure.

Scenario two:

You are a business man in downtown Hamilton with your laptop sitting in Gore Park with your laptop open enjoying your lunch on a park bench (this is assuming comfortable outside weather conditions). There appears to be a business man two benches down from you doing exactly the same thing. You are hunting and pecking at the keys on your keyboard, sending email to corporate clients or co-workers. If your equipment is not secured properly by your IT department, the other gentleman down the way could have two wireless cards in his laptop. One hooking up to the Cities free Internet and the other pretending to be the Cities free Internet. Your laptop may find his second wireless card as an access point. You just sent all that information through his laptop giving him the ability to copy, change, and / or redistribute your information any way he wants to and you will not find out about it until it is too late.

I can hear the comments as I am writing this. That is so farfetched, it would never happen to me. Well it is happening around the world right now with travellers in airports. There have been many security breaches reported in European airports and train stations using scenario two.

This only mentions a couple of threats possible with the new wireless network. Your company is responsible for your own information security and you should make sure you have a plan in place before the Wi-Fi mesh is in place.