“Security is still a serious deterrent to enterprise deployment of wireless LANs, especially in companies where many workers are outside the conventional office environment but are dealing with sensitive data and critical projects. A good example of this is Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer.

Boeing could see many benefits of WLAN, particularly to link the thousands of its workers who are on the factory floor and could perform more effectively with constant access to information. However, aircraft projects are not only highly secretive but also involve many kinds of computer technology, such as scanners and machine control devices, that are even less well secured in current WLan technologies than laptops.

The company, and specifically its security leaders Stephen Whitlock and Paul Dodd, faces a dilemma ¡V whether to go full speed ahead with WLANs now in order to start to gain the business benefits this year, but using interim security standards that are not fully trustworthy and that will enforce a second upgrade within a year; or to slow down on wireless LANs until the proposed IEEE 802.11i security standard, which will be strong enough to make 802.11 a trusted network in the Boeing infrastructure, becomes available in products next year.”