Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
Re: Hopefully not too OT
From: "Kevin Sheldrake" <kev () electriccat co uk>
Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 10:47:15 +0100
From: "Paul Melson" <psmelson () comcast net> To: <jimmy () chickenhollow net>, <firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com> Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] Hopefully not too OT Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 17:12:59 -0400 I fear that a jammer would give you a false sense of security. For one,they're not totally effective, especially against ad-hoc networks in close proximity to each other. Sure, they kill performance, but they don't shut it down. Secondly, they can actually assist those airsnort-ing your space in collecting unique IV's should your rogue users be well-intentioned enough to use WEP. Thirdly, many jammers only operate in the 2.4GHz band - in the US alone you can buy WiFi products that operate at 915MHz and 5.8GHz, to say nothing of FHSS vs. DSSS. And, perhaps more importantly, jammers are not at all neighborly if your offices share space or proximity to businesses thatdo choose to use WiFi.Not to say that I have a better technical solution, but if you don't want*people* in or with your organization to use wireless, then you have a *people* problem that requires a people solution. PaulMJimmy: Actually, Paul Robertson, Ben, and Paul Melson hit the nail on the head. You need a written policy saying, in effect, "no wireless access to the company network", get the employees to sign off on it AFTER the layer-8/9 people approve the policy. If anyone breaks the rules after that, then you have an HR problem.
While I agree that failure to adhere to the security policy is certainly an HR problem, we shouldn't forget that all internal security issues involving staff or contractors are HR problems, but it doesn't stop us doing something about them.
I'm sure you understand that in order to recognise the HR problem, we need suitable accounting and audit systems (however the sensors are implemented). We also might be concerned about the exposure to risk in the period between detection and repair, and we might wish to do something to lower it ahead of the breach.
As I said, I don't think I'm stating anything new, I just thought it was worth stating that technical controls should be developed hand-in-hand with personnel and procedural controls; changing the policy alone might not have the desired effect and, with insufficient accounting and audit, we may never know.
Kev -- Kevin Sheldrake MEng MIEE CEng CISSP Electric Cat (Cheltenham) Ltd _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- RE: Hopefully not too OT, (continued)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Marcus J. Ranum (May 02)
- Re: Hopefully not too OT Barney Wolff (May 03)
- Re: Hopefully not too OT Marcus J. Ranum (May 03)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Marcus J. Ranum (May 02)
- Impeding wireless (was Re: Hopefully not too OT) Kevin (May 02)
- Re: Hopefully not too OT Paul D. Robertson (May 02)
- Re: Hopefully not too OT David Lang (May 02)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Paul Melson (May 02)
- Re: Hopefully not too OT Jim MacLeod (May 05)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Behm, Jeffrey L. (May 02)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Gregory Hicks (May 02)
- Re: Hopefully not too OT Kevin Sheldrake (May 03)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT MHawkins (May 05)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Paul D. Robertson (May 05)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Chris Blask (May 08)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Frederick M Avolio (May 12)
- RE: Hopefully not too OT Paul D. Robertson (May 05)