Trilight Zone

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Wireless routers will gain an extra level of protection in November, as an automated form of Wi-Fi security will enter then market.

In his presentation Thursday at the Digital Home Developers Conference, Sandeep Parikh, project manager for the Wi-Fi Alliance announced that the group's new specification, the Wi-Fi Protected Setup, will launch next month.

The new certified technology -- the first to be independently developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance -- will cut in half the number of steps it takes to set up a secure home or small business network, according to Parikh.

The new system, which will be also be incorporated into Windows Vista, will work in conjunction with computers, peripherals, and other consumer electronics.

Designed to ease set up of security-enabled Wi-Fi networks in the home and small office environment. Wi-Fi Protected Setup will let users simply push a button or enter a PIN into a wizard-type application.

Accoording to Parikh, users will be able to initiate a WPS mode on a gateway and then enter a simple sequence of digits (like a PIN), and then press a button to initiate a secure key exchange to retrieve the WPA key.

As a fallback, the devices themselves will also be able to produce the underlying WPA key.

A recent survey conducted by the Wi-Fi Alliance and Kelton Research claimed that as many as 43 percent of users found that installing and setting up security on a home Wi-Fi network to be moderately-to-very difficult.

"Although Wi-Fi networking has strong security in place, many consumers simply do not protect their home networks," Parikh said.

Additionally, when a new Wi-Fi certified or Wi-Fi Protected Setup device is in range, its presence will automatically be detected.