Security has been specified since the original 802.11 wireless specification in 1997. The initial definition was fairly modest and provided a basic level of security. This security, known as Wired Equivalent Privacy, or WEP, was intended to comply with US Export guidelines at that time, which prohibited the export of strong encryption algorithms. These export standards were relaxed in 2000. With one static key and manual distribution of keys, WEP is generally too unwieldy for embedded networking, which usually requires machine-to-machine (M2M) interaction. Then, in 2001, research papers proved that WEP could easily be broken. The bottom line is that WEP alone is not suitable for securing an encrypted network, and embedded products and software only WEP encryption should be avoided.