SXSW, Part Three: Security
Yesterday I checked out The Future of Unlicensed Wireless. It was a rather good, if very introductory, look at the state of unlicensed wireless, and the technologies that will be arriving in the coming years. The discussion got held up during the Q&A, though, when a guy started heckling the speakers regarding the ineffective security built into the wireless devices and protocols. It bothered me a lot because, while security at the wireless protocol level is important, this isn’t solely a network level issue. Application’s and (perhaps most of all) user education are the biggest issues to security in these fields. Encryption at the 802.11 or Bluetooth level might be important, but your application level (http, imap, etc.) ought to be encrypted anyway, since once your packets hit the wireless router, the wireless encryption isn’t helping you anymore.