Evaluation of Security Schemes: State of Art in Wireless Communication

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the current existing authentication schemes in wireless networks.Wireless networks provide an efficient means of connecting network devices. This is because they are fast, cost effective, flexible and easy to use. However, their usage is hindered by a number of challenges, owing to the fact that the physical connections between devices are replaced by logical associations. This means that anybody with a radio detector can receive these signals. Moreover, the data propagation in wireless environment is broadcast in nature and hence propagations can be overheard by anyone within a given range. To address these challenges, authentication protocols have been developed to deter any illicit access to these networks. They include Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). However, these protocols have been shown to be easily compromised, for example due to the utilization of weak initialization vector which leads to collision of the generated hashes. This necessitates the development of more secure mechanisms for protecting the information in transit. The latest effort in securing wireless data propagations involves the usage of the light fidelity technology. In this paper, empirical review of these security technologies given.