Warnings & Alerts: Protecting Your Wireless Network
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Not so long ago, it was common for IT workers to have Cat 5 networking cable running through their house or apartment, connecting their home network to the multitude of computers spread throughout the rooms. These days, as the speed of wireless networking has continued to rise, we have far less intrusive options.
Most home cable or DSL routers now have wireless built into them. In fact, it’s more difficult to find a router that doesn’t come with wireless functionality. Many home users may not even want this feature — and this is where the security problem lies.
Unconfigured or poorly configured wireless access points (WAPs) give cyber-criminals a way of joining your network without your knowledge. Once they are on, they can attack your computer directly, watch your traffic for anything that may be of use to them (such as online banking usernames and passwords) or use your Internet connection to send spam or conduct other illegal activities, without being linked to it themselves. Obviously, the solution is to protect your wireless network from intrusion, but that’s not always as simple as it seems.
The original and most widely used method of encryption is the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, which uses a 64 or 128 bit encryption key. Unfortunately, there are programs out there that break WEP encryption in as little as a few seconds, making WEP encryption almost useless for protecting data. To combat the obvious inadequacy of WEP, a standards group known as IEEE began work on a new encryption standard. As an interim measure, Wi-Fi Protected Access or WPA was introduced. WPA is greatly improved over WEP, but it still has its limits.
The IEEE group continued its work on a standard and, eventually, 802.11i was released. It included the WPA protocol, plus additional functionality and new encryption protocols (AES). Inside your routers, this will likely be labeled as WPA2 and it is currently the gold standard for Wi-Fi and should always be used when available.
Wireless networking has been a huge boon for convenience, but many people do not understand the danger they are putting themselves in when they buy a product off the shelf without knowing how it should be configured. To keep yourself safe, always follow these steps:
- Never use WEP. It takes seconds to break and someone will find it.
- If you already have a router or access point with WPA and you do not have anything sensitive to protect, you may consider keeping it, though you should change the encryption key regularly.
- If you are buying a new device, make sure is does WPA2 or 802.11i — anything less is outdated. And make sure that you configure it to only use WPA2!
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Let me know if you have any comments, questions or suggestions. Write David W. Weatherholt at david@bnewsviews.com
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Business/News & Views® / by David. W. Weatherholt
ISBN: 978-0-9823041-1-2 (electronic format)
Published in the United States of America through www.waconsult.com
Published in an electronic format by Weatherholt & Associates, LLC
First Trade Publishing: October 2008
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