Security in Wireless Networks

Wireless Camera allow for added flexibility in the placement of cameras and other networked devices throughout the system, but they require added security measures. WLANs are not necessarily bound by the walls of the buildings they serve, which open them up to security issues not faced with wired solutions. Due to the nature of wireless communications, everyone with a wireless device within the area covered by the network can potentially access its applications. To address these concerns, there are a number of different methods for securing wireless networks, including Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP), WiFi Protected Access (WPA), and WiFi Protected Access 2 (WPA2), plus a number of proprietary solutions.

WEP

WEP encrypts data transmitted over the WLAN. Once WEP has been established, other typical LAN security mechanisms such as password protection, end-toend encryption, virtual private networks, and authentication can be put in place to further ensure privacy. WEP adds encryption to the communication and prevents people without the correct key from accessing the network. However, the encryption code in WEP is static, which makes it vulnerable to attacks with inexpensive offthe-shelf software. Therefore it should not be the only method used to secure a wireless network.

WPA2

For even higher 3G Wi-Fi Camera , WPA2 should be used. WPA2 uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instead of TKIP. AES is the best encryption available for wireless networks today and is currently being used by the U.S. Government to secure sensitive, but not classified information. WPA2 is also referred to as 802.11i. Some vendors have established proprietary modes of securing information on a wireless network. While these systems may be very secure, keep in mind that these can become cumbersome and difficult to manage when working with a variety of vendors on an installation.

WPA

WPA was created as a response to flaws in WEP. WPA works with most wireless network interface cards. With WPA, the access key is changed with every transmitted frame using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). This makes it much more secure, and it is now considered the basic level of security necessary for wireless networks.

Using the Wireless Home Monitor, AIS deployed a wireless option and later discovered an extensive drag racing operation that was using the industrial park late at night for races. AIS worked with the Chicago Police Department, which was able to bust the ring, impound more than 100 cars, and make more than 300 arrests. While wireless networks have many benefits, there are still a few drawbacks. Wireless networks can affect the frame rate and latency of video delivery, and bandwidth is affected by the distance from the device to the access point. Wireless networks are also susceptible to interference by other wireless technologies and systems.

Wireless networks can have a profound affect when used in areas it would be otherwise impossible to deploy a surveillance system. Ace Internet Solutions (AIS) installed a Home Security Cameras when it moved to an industrial park in Chicago. There had been a rash of vandalism and theft in the area, and to help combat the problem, the company wanted to install a surveillance system to monitor an area which encompassed nine square blocks.

“Because all of the network cameras were set up outdoors, running data cabling to each of them would have been too costly and difficult to maintain,” said Jeff Holewinski, president of AIS. “With a wireless connection, the cameras can transmit images no matter where they are, even from the top of light poles.”

If you follow the instructions that come with the your software to connect your GPS Tracking People to a computer, usually getting the two devices talking is painless. If you do run into problems, follow this set of steps, in this order, to help you identify a possible culprit for your connection troubles:

1. Always make sure the cable is securely plugged in to both the GPS receiver and the computer. While you’re at it, check that the GPS receiver is turned on.

2. Make sure that the baud rate and the protocol are the same in both the GPS receiver and the interface program. Double-check this again if you can’t establish a connection. Even if the baud rates match, they may be set too high — thus causing communication errors. When in doubt, lower the baud rate. You can either step-down a rate at a time or go directly to 4,800 or 9,600 baud. Although this is slow, this rate shouldn’t generate errors.

3. In the interface program, make sure that the correct COM port is specified. If you can’t get a connection, try different COM port numbers until you find one that works.

4. Always check the program’s user manual, online help, or support section of the vendor’s Web site for specific information on interfacing with a GPS receiver. If you can’t get your GPS receiver to talk to your computer and you happen to have a PDA, turn off the PDA synchronization program first. PDA synchronization software that’s running in the background is a frequent culprit in causing GPS receiver interface problems.

Turn here directions: The GPS receiver lists all the streets and roads in your route at which you’ll need to make turns, including the street name, an arrow that points to the correct turning direction, how far ahead the turn is, and how long it’s going to take to arrive at the turn. The GPS receiver gives an audible or visual signal prior to when you need to turn.

Points of interest: Maps that are used with road navigation GPS receivers have databases of information about gas stations, restaurants, freeway exits, hotels, attractions, entertainment, shopping, and emergenc services along your route. These are dubbed Points of Interest (POIs); the GPS Tracking Devices can display information about specific POIs.

External antenna support: Because the metal body of a car or truck might interfere with satellite signals, an external antenna might be required to connect to the GPS receiver. An external antenna also provides you with more mounting location options because only the antenna needs to be mounted someplace with a clear view of the sky. Note: Some heated windshields can block satellite signals. In cases like that, you’ll probably need to use an external antenna with a magnetic roof mount.

If you’re a GPS road warrior, you’ll definitely want a 12-volt cigarette lighter adapter so you don’t go through a lot of batteries during a trip. And finally, if you’re more of an urbanite (versus an outdoors) adventurer, another option is to use a PDA, such as a Pocket PC or Palm with Small GPS Tracking Device and street navigation software. Chapter 6 discusses the ins and outs of using PDAs with GPS.

It was just a few years since the launch of the first GPS satellite. As the constellation grew—and, along with it, a method of tracking that further enhanced the ability of humans to observe and gather data—the question of sensory augmentation and the law would grow more urgent.

For an airport of its size, Newark Liberty is squeezed into a fairly small footprint. The team that set up the GBAS receivers found that the only spot at the airport that provided full coverage was next to a runway at the airport’s eastern edge. Each receiver sat within 200 meters of the New Jersey Turnpike.

The freeway’s centrality guarantees that a sizable amount of its traffic is always commercial vehicles. A significant number of these, it turned out, are driven by people who possess “personal privacy devices,” a euphemistic term for GPS jammers. The drivers carried these jammers to foil the tracking apparatuses set up by their bosses to monitor the whereabouts of employees. Although operating one is illegal, they are cheap—often under $100—and easy to obtain from Internet vendors. Small and innocuous, many plug right into a vehicle’s dashboard cigarette lighter. They form a little interference bubble in the area surrounding the jammer, stopping the GPS signal from getting through. This interference was disrupting the GBAS receivers.

The discovery came as a shock to the GBAS team. “We were generally aware of people with jammers in the cars,” says Sam Pullen, leader of the Stanford GPS Lab’s GBAS research group. “But we knew those devices were low-power. So we suspected there would be fewer bumps and that we’d rarely see them. We didn’t think about it that closely, but there was no reason to think that car-based jammers by themselves would be much more frequent than what we had seen previously.”

Authorities began a stakeout of the Turnpike. But pinpointing the source of the jammers was difficult, so the GBAS outages continued. On April 29, the effort finally paid off. Police were positioned on the Turnpike, near the runway, when the interference began. It seemed to coincide with the passing of a certain truck. They raced after it and motioned the driver to pull over. The jammer was right there on the dashboard. The driver made no attempt to hide it. In exchange for handing it over, the police let the driver go on his way with a warning.

Moving the GBAS array was not an option. No other spot could so effectively cover the airport. Instead, the team made some adjustments to the software, which mitigated the problem a bit, but not completely. Cars and trucks with GPS jammers continued to use the Turnpike, and sometimes they jammed the GBAS. Throughout the summer months, the team monitored the problem—the monotonous jamming blips from trucks passing through America’s most dangerous two miles.

Until one day in August, when the static suddenly got worse. By the second half of the 1980s, companies like Trimble and Qualcomm were exploring the market for GPS  tracking devices that would allow trucking companies to monitor their drivers’ whereabouts. A GPS tracker is simply a GPS receiver integrated into some kind of communication device that periodically transmits or records that location. The problem for early fleet management systems was not so much the GPS aspect, as it was finding radio frequencies usable over wide geographic areas to transmit the coordinates back to the monitoring centers. But the customers were there. Three years after it debuted, Qualcomm’s Omnitracs system had signed up about 100 trucking companies and was monitoring the whereabouts of 15,000 trucks. Drivers were required to enter messages onto a dashboard-mounted terminal. Satellite dishes on the trucks relayed the information to Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters, which forwarded it to the driver’s dispatchers.

As cellular networks developed and the cost of access decreased, GPS tracking became a more realistic proposition. Between 1992 and 1997, U.S. Census Bureau “vehicle inventory and use” surveys found that the percentage of commercial trucks on the road being tracked electronically rose from roughly one in ten to nearly one in four. The process of tracking via GPS became much simpler. “A GPS tracking device is like a mini-cell phone, more or less,” says Ryan Driscoll, the marketing manager at GPS Insight, an Arizona-based company that designs GPS tracking software. At regular intervals, the device transmits the GPS reading to a monitor, either a live human or a computer that gathers and archives the location data.

By 2005, companies and government organizations were using GPS to track 1.3 million fleet vehicles. Analysts projected that the North American fleet management market alone would grow to $7 billion over the next few years. More than half of all fleets with 100 or more vehicles now use a GPS fleet management system—for companies with more than 350 vehicles, the adoption rate is approaching 60 percent. The worldwide fleet management industry, valued at $12 billion in 2014, is on track to be worth more than $35 billion by 2019, with Asian and Pacific markets showing the highest growth rates. In Delhi, a public-private partnership between the Indian government and an infrastructure investment company has installed GPS trackers on all 60,000 public rickshaws, to prevent drivers from gouging tourists by taking longer routes. In China, GPS tracking is used to control the black market in “gutter oil,” recycled cooking oil that is combined with industrial waste and other effluents, which may account for 10 percent of all cooking oil used in the country. GPS trackers on garbage trucks keep track of where oil is collected, so that officials can ensure that the amount collected does not mysteriously decrease before disposal.

Fleet management is one of the fastest-growing segments of the overall GPS industry, and the largest segment of the telematics industry—companies that specialize in processing and transmitting real-time data from vehicles. It has proven itself to be recession-proof. “Our businesses thrive in a bad economy,” Driscoll says. “When expenses are tight, they need this. They can’t afford to waste fuel. They can’t afford to pay drivers for wasted labor hours. They’ve got to shave as many costs around the entire operation as possible.”

Among the private trucking fleets that use portable GPS tracking device, two-thirds integrate the system with other data gathering, to analyze job performance. The most extreme example may be United Parcel Service, whose drivers—“among the most regimented workers in the country outside those on an assembly line,” according to labor journalist Jane Slaughter—use trucks outfitted with 200 telematics sensors, recording such metrics as how hard a driver brakes and how long it takes to deliver a package and get a signature. In much the same way that Todd Humphreys described GPS in a drone as the “bulwark,” surrounded by and supporting other navigation tools, GPS location tracking in fleets is the foundation supporting many kinds of telematics data. Perhaps a clue as to why vehicle GPS tracking device is so seductive as a gateway to other information is that fleet managers overwhelmingly rate “vehicle location” as the principal benefit of GPS tracking, far ahead of fuel consumption and cost control. As the sales manager of a GPS fleet management company put it, summing up the prevailing attitude of his clients, “I want to know my employees are working, not at the Circle K having a soda.”