wireless network always makes the access to the network open, because the SSID is always broadcasting. Data
are transferred through the use of radio waves and thus making the data available through everywhere in space,
enabling the corresponding users to receive the information anytime with the right device in this case a radio receiver.
Due to this data protection becomes a pressing issue to deal with. Wired networks are traditionally protected
or secured via firewalls, shields etc. while this cannot be done in the case of wireless data protection. Protecting
data in wireless environment or networks need a different mechanism altogether, in order to give the users
a secure feel in data transfer and have accuracy, reliability, availability, integrity, and confidentiality.
In a world of diverse communication between nodes, wired and wireless devices, and mobile-wireless devices.
Data communication has reached a significant point in Information Technology that security of data gives the
user an opportunity to share or exchange information securely using the right and appropriate tool. Today banks,
government, defense systems all have changed the way data are been exchanged or transmitted, transactions
have been compromised in different ways. The communication medium that is been used for data communication
are vulnerable to different attacks. The protection of these systems is very important and prominent and this
leads to more attacks and loss of important and confidential information when the right measure or system is not
installed [1] [2]. Threats come from hackers, spies, corporate raiders, terrorists, professional criminals etc. Their
objective is either financial or political gain [1] [2]. In trying to solve the security challenge of today’s threats,
network professionals became aware of the Proactive and Reactive approach to tackling security vulnerabilities
[1] [2]. The Proactive approach secures data by predicting the future of an attack and tends to mitigate that attack.
While the reactive approach on the other hand learns from the past attack and use that knowledge to prevent
future attacks from happening [1] [2]. The reactive approach to data security in mobile-wireless network is
like an Anomaly Detection System, which learns from the previous attack and based on the knowledge gained, it
mitigates future attack by crosschecking the behavior of the attack in its database. The reactive approach is a
much easier method compared to the proactive method [1]-[3].
This paper highlights the security advantage of the reactive security approach in data security in a mobile
wireless network and discusses data security in wireless networks. Section two discusses the proactive approach
to data security and common attacks known to data in wireless environment. Section three discusses reactive
approach to data security and different security mechanisms to ensure data security in wireless network environment.
Section four describes topics on cryptography algorithms for data security while section five draws a
conclusion on the reactive approach security and concludes research on data security in wireless networks.