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AirDefense warned corporations that record numbers of municipal wireless deployments across the United States have opened a back door for hackers and unauthorized individuals to access corporate data, files and proprietary information because of sub-par security policies currently in place.

Corporate network administrators face a variety of challenges. Not only do they have to enforce their own wireless network policy to keep hackers off their corporate network, but they also have to deal with employees who intentionally or unknowingly log onto municipal access points in violation of a company's wired/wireless access policy.

Recent data from industry analyst firm Allied Business Research (ABI) suggests an explosion in wireless deployments is occurring. ABI recently reported that municipal Wi-Fi network coverage worldwide will increase to 126,000 square miles by 2010, representing an 84x increase from the 2005 coverage of 1,500 square miles.

"Today, more and more corporations find their airspace invaded by free, unsecured and pervasive Wi-Fi offered by a growing number of cities across the country," according to Dr. Amit Sinha, chief technology officer, AirDefense. "For all the advantages that municipal Wi-Fi offers, any employee can bypass wired security and policy enforcement mechanisms by simply connecting to the Internet through a readily available municipal Wi-Fi access point. This simple fact makes protecting corporate information extremely difficult."