Why Your Enterprise Business Needs the Security of WPA3

Hi everyone!

With all aspects of our lives now dependent on the convenience of wireless connectivity, secure wireless connectivity is an important requirement for most business continuity today. Especially for businesses and small to medium businesses, Wi-Fi security is essential but challenging.

Someone may know WPA or WPA2, but today we're going to share the latest version of the standard WPA3.

What Is WPA3

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a technical standard for protecting wireless network (Wi-Fi) access security. It arises from several serious weaknesses identified by researchers in previous generation Wired Equivalent Encryption (WEP) systems. Currently, WPA and WPA2 are widely implemented. WPA implements most of the IEEE 802.11i standard and is a transition solution to replace WEP before 802.11i is complete.

It's not long since the Wi-Fi Alliance released the WPA3 standard to replace WPA2. WPA2 has dominated Wi-Fi security for more than a decade. Even now most home Wi-Fi or business wireless networks are using WPA2. It wasn't until the discovery of the WPA2 vulnerability in 2017 caused some unease in the IT community that the Wi-Fi Alliance came up with a more secure standard. WPA3 was released in 2018 to address this vulnerability and improve WPA2. WPA3 has two versions similar to WPA2, WPA3-Personal, and WPA3-Enterprise, based on its previous success and large-scale adoption. As the name suggests, WPA3-Personal is basically for personal or home use and is easy to deploy and use, while WPA3-Enterprise is typically used in organizations and is generally more secure than the WPA3-Personal model.

How WPA3 Protects Enterprise Business

WPA3-Enterprise and WPA3-Personal differ in their purposes and security requirements. Compared with WPA2, WPA3 has the following changes and benefits:

WPA3 Provides Strong Encryption for Enterprise Businesses

WPA3-Enterprise mode, which changes from the 128-bit security level of WPA2-Enterprise to the 192-bit security level. This capability provides additional security for security-sensitive areas such as government, defense, and industrial verticals. In addition, WPA3 introduces a 256-bit Galois/Counter mode protocol and a 384-bit Hash Message Authentication Mode (HMAC) and Secure Hash algorithm to set a consistent security baseline to better protect sensitive data.

WPA3 Brings Simplified Wi-Fi Security to Enterprise Businesses

WPA3 devices reduce the complexity of configuring Wi-Fi devices with limited or no display interfaces, especially in the IoT market. Enhancements enable users to add to a Wi-Fi network using another device with a more powerful interface, such as scanning a QR code with a smartphone. This Easy Connect option eliminates the long-term problem of IoT devices being difficult to deploy because they don't have a screen or monitor. So with WPA3 devices with Easy Connect, IoT devices can connect to a secure network.

WPA3 Significantly Protects Public Networks for Enterprise Businesses

WPA3 devices support Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Enhanced Open™, an enhancement that vendors include in their Wi-Fi products, such as routers or access points. We are often told that we should avoid sensitive browsing on public Wi-Fi networks, such as coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, or other places that offer free Wi-Fi services to retain customers. Because these public places use WPA2-Personal with shared and public PSKs, and anyone on the same public network can observe your activity. With Wi-Fi Enhanced Open WPA3 access points or routers in such public places, even if the user's device is associated with a WPA3 device, the connection is automatically encrypted using established standard opportunistic wireless encryption (OWE), protecting the customer's data confidentiality and avoiding unnecessary disputes.

WPA3 security technology and its new features bring important updates to Wi-Fi security for personal and business networks. Emphasizing wireless network security is critical for today's enterprise networks, especially when reliable Wi-Fi access is critical for customers or employees. Enterprise networking solutions with WPA3 access points or routers will provide more value and better address secure network issues.

That's all I want to share, so is WPA3 security already in place on your personal or corporate network? If you know more about WPA, please discuss and share in the comments section.

Thank you!

Content Source: FS community