Wi-Fi Alliance Significantly Upgrades Security with WPA3

New Standard Announcement: WPA3

The Wi-Fi alliance has recently announced a new security standard, WPA3. This will be available for both personal and business wireless networks soon. As for its purpose, WPA3 sets out to bring much needed improvements over the previous WPA2 standard. Especially in the modern age where online security breaches are common. WPA3 enhances protection against password-guessing attempts, including offline attacks. A hacker might captures your Wi-Fi data to use it offline in an attempt to guess passwords over and over. However, WPA3 will render that data useless and only allow a single guess.

WPA3 security will continue to support the market through two distinct modes of operation: WPA3-Personal and WPA3-Enterprise. All WPA3 networks use the latest security methods, disallow outdated legacy protocols, and require use of Protected Management Frames (PMF) to maintain resiliency of mission critical networks.

What is The Difference Between WPA3-Personal and WPA3-Enterprise Security?

• WPA3-Personal: more resilient, password-based authentication even when users choose passwords that fall short of typical complexity recommendations. WPA3 leverages Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), a secure key establishment protocol between devices, to provide stronger protections for users against password guessing attempts by third parties.
• WPA3-Enterprise: offers the equivalent of 192-bit cryptographic strength, providing additional protections for networks transmitting sensitive data, such as government or finance. The 192-bit security suite ensures a consistent combination of cryptographic tools are deployed across WPA3 networks.

When is WPA3 Rolling Out?

The Wi-Fi alliance expects the WPA3 to roll-out some time next year in 2019. This coincides with the launch of another Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ax, which significantly improves home network speeds.