TABLE OF CONTENTS Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) are expected to have a reassuring effect on e-commerce, but not until we ve established that both the sender and receiver can be trusted and are who they say they are. It follows that there must also be a way to guarantee that the information has not been intercepted or modified in route. Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) was developed for this purpose as a replacement for the flawed WEP 802.11b security. It works by performing client and server authentication to confirm the identity of the sender and his or her message. It also encrypts the data in transit to keep the information secret and checks the integrity of the data after it arrives.
WTLS is a useful wireless security standard based on the IETF s Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which in turn was expressly developed as an Internet standard version of Secure Socket Layer (SSL).1
SSL enables secure data transfer between two devices over a public network, providing authentication, confidentiality, and data integrity through the use of encryption. The protocol has two primary functions: to provide privacy between client and server, and to authenticate the server to the client. Originally developed by Netscape Communications to allow secure access of a browser to a Web server, SSL became a de facto standard over the years and was licensed for use in other applications. Today, SSL is the most widely used method of securing data on the Internet.
