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Making Wireless Networks Secure for NASA Mission Critical Applications using Virtual Private Network (VPN) TechnologyWith so many security issues involved with wireless networks, the technology has not been fully utilized in the area of mission critical applications. These applications would include the areas of telemetry, commanding, voice and video. Wireless networking would allow payload operators the mobility to take computers outside of the control room to their offices and anywhere else in the facility that the wireless network was extended. But the risk is too great of having someone sit just inside of your wireless network coverage and intercept enough of your network traffic to steal proprietary data from a payload experiment or worse yet hack back into your system and do even greater harm by issuing harmful commands. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is improving but has a ways to go before it can be trusted to protect mission critical data. Today s hackers are becoming more aggressive and innovative, and in order to take advantage of the benefits that wireless networking offer, appropriate security measures need to be in place that will thwart hackers. The Virtual Private Network (VPN) offers a solution to the security problems that have kept wireless networks from being used for mission critical applications. VPN provides a level of encryption that will ensure that data is protected while it is being transmitted over a wireless local area network (IAN). The VPN allows a user to authenticate to the site that the user needs to access. Once this authentication has taken place the network traffic between that site and the user is encapsulated in VPN packets with the Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES). 3DES is an encryption standard that uses a single secret key to encrypt and decrypt data. The length of the encryption key is 168 bits as opposed to its predecessor DES that has a 56-bit encryption key. Even though 3DES is the common encryption standard for today, the Advance Encryption Standard (AES), which provides even better encryption at a lower cycle cost is growing acceptance. The user computer running the VPN client and the. target site that is running the . VPN firewall exchange this encryption key and therefore are the only ones that are able to decipher the data. The level of encryption offered by the VPN is making it possible for wireless networks to pass the strict security policies that have kept them from being used in the past. Now people will be able to benefit from the many advantages that wireless networking has to offer in the area of mission critical applications.
Document ID
20040075667
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Nichols, Kelvin F.
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Best, Susan
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Schneider, Larry
(Lockheed Martin Corp. Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2004
Subject Category
Computer Systems
Meeting Information
Meeting: SpaceOps 2004
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Country: Canada
Start Date: May 17, 2004
End Date: May 21, 2004
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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