This brings us to the masquerade and rogue AP attacks. The best defense against these types of attacks is encryption; by this we mean the encryption of the data on your network. This will prevent an attacker from successfully compromising WLAN traffic because it will be encrypted even if they manage to break in to the wireless network. This is best accomplished by setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This is an essential component to deploy when you are connected to wireless hotspots. There are a number of VPN services out there, but before we get into them, we will look at examples with and without a VPN. If you refer to the next screenshot, you will see the network data from a wireless network that is not protected by a VPN.

As you can see, the FTP protocol is clear text, and as such, the data that was entered (that is, the username and password) has been compromised on this network. The way to protect this is...