The majority of wireless access points located in seven metropolitan financial centers have easy-to-break or nonexistent security, according to a survey conducted by security firm AirTight Networks and published on Wednesday.
The survey, which summarized more than 30 scans in six U.S. cities and London, found that 57 percent of the access points had no security or used Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), an older and easy-to-hack form of encryption. Almost 40 percent of the insecure wireless networks used enterprise-grade hardware from major vendors, suggesting that they were deployed by companies, not consumers, said Mike Baglietto, director of product marketing for AirTight Networks.
"We thought wireless was mature enough that people should understand the security issues," Baglietto said. "But we saw a lot of open access points, a lot of identities being leaked, and a lot of insecure installations."
This article, if accurate, identifies the more accurate status of our information security systems. Hopefully the results of this survey will prompt the companies in question to get up to speed with the modern standards of computer and information security.
