One of the leading promoters of high-speed wireless, or Wi-Fi technology, thinks Wi-Fi's "notorious" vulnerability to unauthorized intrusion is the very thing that might help sell companies on the need to embrace it, Reuters reported June 10.
Intel chief financial officer Andy Bryant says his firm discovered that security offered by controlled wireless was better than computer security regimes which usually block wireless as a threat. "We found that as long as we kept saying 'No'," Bryant told a Bear Stearns technology conference here, "the number of unsecure networks increased inside our company."
Wi-Fi lets computer users hunt the airwaves for nearby access points, but making Internet connections easier is accompanied by compounding the risks of unauthorized network access if not fully secured, Reuters said. But Bryant told the Bear Stearns conference it means Intel quit trying to keep Wi-Fi out and get behind the movement among the company's individual workers to put Wi-Fi in.
"It became very simple. Quite frankly, if we didn't (provide Wi-Fi access for Intel employees), it was going to happen anyway," he told the conference, saying putting Wi-Fi in pre-empts "rogue" users in his own company and outside of it. "Wireless has arrived," he said. "Who makes money and who benefits and how this is going to work out is yet to be determined," he said.
