8.5 Security
Never ignore security. As I have emphasised several times, wireless does not have the inherent security of a cable. Instead, authentication and encryption need to be employed. The media love to publish stories about personal data being stolen, and poor security in a wireless product can result in adverse reportage that can kill a product’s sales, or even those of a complete technology. An equally important consideration is the resulting product liability in the event of a link being compromised and customer data or actions stolen or corrupted. On both counts, designers should ensure that the security of a wireless link is fit for its purpose. All of the standards place great emphasis on their security and all have robust implementations. Always use the most recent stable version of the standard and implement all of the applicable security features. Critical applications should also consider adding further end-to-end authentication and security processes at the application level.