Campus Currents

How safe is your laptop when you log on to the wi-fi network at your local coffee shop? Not safe enough, according to industry experts. Current wireless security software is good at confirming the identity of users logging on to a network, but more research is needed to protect against increasingly sophisticated security threats, according to UNH computer science professor Radim Bartos.

"Protection is a two-way street," says Bartos. "Besides blocking bad users, you want to make sure that a good user with an infected machine does not enter the network, or that users with healthy machines do not enter infected networks."

To help improve the security of wireless networks, Meetinghouse Data Communications in Portsmouth, N.H., founded by Paul Goransson '95G, will collaborate with UNH researchers next year and provide $150,000 in research funding.

UNH research project manager Scott Valcourt '99G will work with Bartos and graduate student Myung-Sun Kim to contribute to the standards that govern network security programs, known as the Extensible Authentication Protocol. Says Bartos: "Standardization is a key requirement for the success of any new networking technology."

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