SECURE YOUR AIRSPACE.

This article focuses on apprehensions of enterprise wireless holdouts for Wi-Fi. Even so, with the exception of ultrahigh-security installations, it's better to embrace WLANs than to fight them. Prohibiting Wi-Fi in an organization would require a bulletproof enforcement policy and monitoring tools to protect against rogue deployments. Gartner projects enterprise WLAN spending to hit $1.6 billion by 2009, assuming a compound annual growth rate of 12 percent from 2004 to that time. A properly engineered Wi-Fi security system can not only provide robust security for wireless users, it can also act as a platform to better secure wired network segments that have, for too long, relied on nothing more than physical security to combat abuse. Like any enterprise-class security system, an effective wireless security strategy must be multi-layered. Messages transported across wireless links must be protected by strong encryption. Even the most careful IT manager must accept that, for some wireless threats, there's no defense.