CIOL: What makes wireless networks so susceptible?  Are the wireless network users aware of these vulnerabilities? Are they cautious enough?
VR: The convenience and anonymity of wireless networks is mostly to be blamed, we think, for the increased insecurities. People using wireless networks typically assume that nobody in that "hotspot" knows who they are or who they work for, so they assume that the risk of attacks against their system is low.

The reality is, this may not be the case: it is almost trivial to follow people around, and once you see your "target" logged into a wireless network, you can login yourself and browse for his computer on the network.

Users so far are not as aware of the security risks of public wireless networks as they should be. It does not matter if they login via GPRS, 802.11b/g/n, i-mode or virtually any current wireless protocols. The risk is still the same because the base transport protocol is IP. User education will probably take a few more years at the very least, just as it took years before companies began to take network threats seriously.
 
CIOL: Despite the insecurities, the number of wireless networks is still increasing. How can we increase the awareness of security issues in this scenario?
VR: Public wireless networks have to remain open to be popular. Securing these networks is likely beyond the skill level of their operators who may be coffee shop owners, shopping center or hotel staff.
User education is one way to raise awareness of these issues, and this can be achieved effectively by the IT staff in virtually all companies.

Other ways may be "locking down" corporate laptops so that when they leave the company, shared folders are reset to an unshared default, and only the services that are absolutely necessary are enabled. Some antivirus software vendors already offer this feature, which applies different security policies depending on the connection type.