WiMAX Not As Secure As You Think, Says ABI

According to a newly released report by ABI Research, as WiMAX deployments become prevalent throughout the globe, they will provide attractive revenues opportunities for software security vendors.

The report, titled ‘WiMAX Security Issues,’ revealed that WiMAX is not as infallible as it is generally thought to be and that it does have a number of security vulnerabilities.

It is these gaps that will create lucrative revenue opportunities for security solutions vendors, stated the report.

“Early Wi-Fi consumers enjoyed a false sense of security until there were some well-publicized hacking exploits. The WiMAX Forum has emphasized how much more secure WiMAX is than early Wi-Fi. As a result, there may be WiMAX customers who are similarly lulled into a false sense of security. However, the flaws will begin to show themselves once major WiMAX rollouts start to occur,” said Stan Schatt of ABI Research.

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The study classified WiMAX security gaps into three main categories, viz. user terminals, intrusion detection, and connectivity service networks.

It said that except for few large companies such as Motorola, Nortel, and Alcatel, not many WiMAX vendors have the expertise to fill all of these gaps. This presents great opportunity for smaller specialized developers to create and supply solutions for the problem.

“To some extent, WiMAX security specialists will attempt to sell solutions directly to end- users, but the lesson learned from Wi-Fi is that these products are most attractive to customers when tightly integrated. So most WiMAX security solutions will be offered through partnerships with WiMAX equipment vendors,” concluded Schatt.