Wi-Fi Protecte Access (WPA and WPA2) is a certification program administered by the Wi-Fi Alliance to indicate compliance with the security protocol created by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless computer networks. This protocol was created in response to several serious weaknesses researchers had found in the previous system, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The protocol implements the majority of the IEEE 802.11i standard, and was intended as an intermediate measure to take the place of WEP while 802.11i was prepared. The protocol is specifically designed to also work with pre-WPA wireless network interface cards that pre-date the protocol (through firmware upgrades), but not necessarily with first generation wireless access points. The WPA2 certification mark indicates compliance with an advanced protocol that implements the full standard. This advanced protocol will not work with some older network cards.