An Investigation of Security Trends in Personal Wireless Networks

Wireless networks are now an aspect of everyday life for many people across the world, an area of the internet that is always growing, from homeowners to many businesses. Every year these users will be looking to upgrade their networks or change their broadband providers to get the latest and fastest internet connection for downloading the latest album or streaming the latest TV show or movies, but before all this can be accomplished wireless encryption must be secure to ensure the safety of the user's data. Older methods of encryption such as WEP are now becoming even more obsolete, this has led to more research to finding the latest and most secure encryption methods. This project will research and discuss these weak encryption methods and identify the risks that come with using these protocols. The research will be conducted and data will be collected with the use of the wardriving around a selected area in Derby, UK. The results will be critically evaluated against previous data and trends, patterns will be identified in terms of which security protocols are being used