Abstract:

In the recent years, wireless technology in LAN environment became very important. Today wireless LANs (WLANs) happen to be the solution for many homes and offices connectivity. Wireless technology adaptation has many benefits, such as offering greater flexibility than wired LANs, and lowering long term cost of infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.

Moreover, wireless technology has changed the patient care. Doctors can now review any patient data from digital x-rays as they are taken, lab results as they are coded into the system and live patient vital signs monitoring from their mobile PDA’s or Tablet PC’s at the point of care.

In healthcare environment, a WLAN must meet high standard requirements, including high capacity, full connectivity among attached stations, and broadcast capability. However, in meeting these objectives, WLANs face some issues, such as security on the air, power consumption, and bandwidth limitation of the air interface.

In this report, the writer concentrates on WLAN security vulnerabilities at King Abdulaziz Medical City. The review will be on the regulations that govern patient data in its electronic state, and the number of current threats against a wireless network. This also includes recommendations on possible wireless solutions based on the findings.

It is very important to note that no matter how much money is invested in securing a wireless network, how much time is devoted to the job, or how much state of the art security hardware and software is installed, it is  a fact that no network is ever completely secured. Nevertheless, network security is the most important and difficult task facing any network administrator.