VeriSign Monday plans to announce the expansion of its managed security services offerings to include support for wireless LAN intrusion prevention.

Mike Denning, VeriSign’s vice president of security services, says the company is teaming with AirMagnet, a maker of WLAN monitoring and intrusion-prevention gear, which customers would need to deploy inside their networks as part of the managed service.

“The AirMagnet sensors can sniff rogue access points and prevent intrusive attacks,” says Denning, who notes that growing use of WLANs in industry and government is prompting greater need to address the security considerations they bring.

The approximate ratio for sensor deployment would be one AirMagnet Enterprise sensor for every five WLAN access points, Denning says. The management of the AirMagnet sensors, which start at about $10,000 each, would be done remotely through VeriSign’s data-center operations. The network-security information picked up by the sensors would be integrated into the managed-services portal VeriSign provides.

VeriSign’s managed security services are provided globally from around 20 data centers in the United States, Asia and Europe.