Tomorrow, all communications will happen over IP. In the past, telecom operators handled most communications, and the main business for them was voice communication. In reality, almost all last-mile communications today still happen over the conventional telecom infrastructure. The backbone of the Internet has been going through a fast transition to faster and faster fiber optics and digital data transfer. The era of analog communications has been over for some time already.
Today, people speak of Voice over IP, but a better name for the Next Generation Networks is Everything over IP (EoIP). And all of that communication will be wireless. But what does that have to do with the topic of this book? It means the world has to finally wake up to the security of the communications networks.
To be secure, you have to understand that wireless networks are always open. While in traditional telephone networks all the switches were kept behind locked doors and all the cabling was protected, in wireless technology there are no cables and everyone has access to wireless access points. One compromised infrastructure component, and the entire network is compromised. One virus-contaminated access device, and everyone in the network will be contaminated.
