Software security as a barrier to wireless network adoption

Wireless Networks

Computer Software Is Still a Major Barrier to Wireless Information Systems

Despite the exceptional growth of many forms of wireless networks and their many variations including metropolitan Wi-Fi and distance-based wireless networks used in broad geographic regions, software continues to be a major barrier to their adoption. The intent of this analysis is to illustrate why software has now become more of an impediment than catalyst of wireless network adoption and use.

Security

At its most fundamental level, wireless information systems today lack the level of security possible with more proven network topologies and configurations. The pervasive use of Secured Sockets layer (SSL) versus IPsec on wireless networks has become commonplace yet both still have major vulnerabilities in their structure (Titmus, 2006). To attain the highest level of security possible on large-scale wireless information systems a high degree of flexibility needs to be sacrificed (Titmus, 2006). This is not acceptable as the application area that shows the greatest revenue potential is mobile-ecommerce (m-commerce) (Stewart, Spencer, Melby, 2006). The lack of scalable security models is a major impediment to the development of scalable m-commerce business models as a result. IPsec assumes a completely secured network, yet this type of network also cannot scale to a metropolitan level to support m-commerce over the long-term (Xirasagar, Mojtahed, 2010). The reliance on Virtual Private Network (VPN) approaches to corporate networking provide a secured tunnel for transfer of information yet this is only on a one-to-one configuration (Titmus, 2006). From this limited level of software security, the other areas of wireless information systems also become more of an impediment than a catalyst of growth.

Conclusion

The lack of security on wireless information systems is creating a domino effect on wireless commercial applications including m-commerce and content management (Titmus, 2006) (Stewart, Spencer, Melby, 2006). This is in turn slowing down the level of adoption and suitability of wireless networks globally.