Methods for Securing a Wireless Network

• Authentication (username and password, MFA)
• Encrypt wireless traffic
• Verify integrity of communication
  • Message Integrity Check (MIC) - The received data should be identical to the original sent data

Wireless Encryption Types

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) - Deprecated and insecure legacy encryption type

WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) - The 2002 replacement for WEP

• Short-term bridge between WEP and the next successor that could run on existing hardware

WPA2 (2004) and CCMP

• CCMP block cipher mode - offered encryption and integrity in the same protocol
  • Encryption: AES
  • MIC: CBC-MAC

WPA3 (2018) and GCMP

• GCMP block cipher mode
• Encryption with AES again
• MIC with GMAC (Galois Message Authentication Code)