Page 787 - (ISC)² CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide

shielded devices and media. Third, you should always transmit any
sensitive data using secure encryption protocols.

Securing Wireless Access Points

Wireless cells are the areas within a physical environment where a
wireless device can connect to a wireless access point. Wireless cells
can leak outside the secured environment and allow intruders easy
access to the wireless network. You should adjust the strength of the

wireless access point to maximize authorized user access and
minimize intruder access. Doing so may require unique placement of
wireless access points, shielding, and noise transmission.

802.11 is the IEEE standard for wireless network communications.
Various versions (technically called amendments) of the standard have
been implemented in wireless networking hardware, including
802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n. 802.11x is sometimes used to

collectively refer to all of these specific implementations as a group;
however, 802.11 is preferred because 802.11x is easily confused with
802.1x, which is an authentication technology independent of wireless.
Each version or amendment to the 802.11 standard offered slightly
better throughput: 2 MB, 11 MB, 54 MB, and 200 MB+, respectively,
as described in Table 11.7. The b, g, and n amendments all use the
same frequency; thus, they maintain backward compatibility.

TABLE 11.7 802.11 wireless networking amendments

Amendment Speed Frequency
802.11 2 Mbps 2.4 GHz

802.11a 54 Mbps 5 GHz

802.11b 11 Mbps 2.4 GHz

802.11g 54 Mbps 2.4 GHz

802.11n 200+ Mbps 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz
802.11ac 1 Gbps 5 GHz

When you’re deploying wireless networks, you should deploy wireless
access points configured to use infrastructure mode rather than ad