Ilaina Jonas

HAWTHORNE: International Business Machines Corp. on Thursday said it has developed the first technology security monitor to ensure hackers and intruders stay out of corporate local wireless networks.

The tool, the wireless security monitor, is designed to allow overseers of 802.11 wireless networks - the most common wireless network large companies use within their buildings - to ensure data and e-mails are secure as they fly through the air riding on radio waves.

This type of wireless local network allows a corporation's wired local network, creeping throughout a building, to extend to wireless devices through an access point - a server that acts as a liaison between a corporation's hundreds or thousands of wireless devices and its wired network.

But the network becomes vulnerable when radio waves wireless devices use leak out of the building.

"A hacker who's in a car driving by, or who parks in the parking lot, can actually connect through the access point and attack the company's network and eavesdrop on e-mail going by," Dave Safford, manager of network security at IBM Research, told Reuters.

The wireless security monitor itself does not protect the network, data or e-mail. Rather, it allows the network overseer to evaluate the operations of an access point's security technology - encryption, which wraps around data like a shield and authentication, which verifies that the wireless users is allowed entry.

"It's a management issue," Safford said. "Trying to find what access points are out there, and whether or not they're properly installed is the really difficult problem."

The wireless security monitor software operates on a personal digital assistant. It provides a clear graphical picture displaying all the access points within a building and which have their security measures working properly and which ones don't.

Access points have somewhat limited ranges," Safford said, "The best way is to go into a building and walk around and sniff for them. Until now there's literally been no way to tell how many access points you have and whether they've been installed correctly."

The device is still in a testing phase. IBM has not yet decided whether to sell the device as a product, or a service via the company's vast Services division, Safford said.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.