Network Defense Essentials (NDE) Practice Exam 2025 – Your All-in-One Resource to Exam Success!

WPA, or Wi-Fi Protected Access, was designed to improve upon the weaknesses found in WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). One of its key features is the use of TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol), which dynamically generates a new key for every packet sent over the network. This helps to prevent key reuse and the vulnerabilities associated with static keys.

Additionally, WPA incorporates a Message Integrity Check (MIC) to protect against tampering and ensure that the data has not been altered during transmission. This combination of TKIP and MIC provides a level of security that significantly enhances protection compared to WEP.

While WPA2 and WPA3 offer even stronger encryption methods, utilizing AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), the specific mention of TKIP and MIC aligns directly with WPA, highlighting the protocol's importance in transitioning away from the outdated and insecure WEP standard. Thus, WPA is correctly identified as the protocol that utilizes these specific encryption methods.