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Why Wireless LANs could get you in trouble
May 06, 2004
I recently chaired a Wireless LAN Security Conference in Dublin. One of the more interesting things I learned over the two days concerned the Data Protection Act and Wireless LAN technology.
In short, one of the speakers pointed out that if a business using Wireless LAN technology doesn't enable suitable security mechanisms, it might accidentally expose customer or partner data on the network to passing intruders. Aside from all the obvious ramifications of this, one potential legal aside is that the business could fall foul of the Data Protection Act (DPA), which requires this kind of data to be kept secure.
This cast an interesting light on a presentation from another speaker, who presented a long list of open and insecure Access Points that were discovered by WarDriving through Dublin. It raised the theoretical possiblity of the companies that owned these access points being open to prosecution under the DPA. New technology is often good news for lawyers :-)
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