How To Secure Your Wireless Network
People have more flexible time due to wireless network. Thanksto the invention of wireless. People can now work from homewhile taking care of their kids or doing house works. No morestress from traffic jam anymore. Is this great?Well, there is something you should realize. Working from homewhile using a wireless local area network (WLAN) may lead totheft of sensitive information and hacker or virus infiltrationunless proper measures are taken. As WLANs send information overra...
...dio waves, someone with a receiver in your area could bepicking up the transmission, thus gaining access to yourcomputer. They could load viruses on to your laptop which couldbe transferred to the company's network when you go back towork. Believe it or not! Up to 75 per cent of WLAN users do not havestandard security features installed, while 20 per cent are leftcompletely open as default configurations are not secured, butmade for the users to have their network up and running ASAP. Itis recommended that wireless router/access point setup be alwaysdone though a wired client. You can setup your security by follow these steps:1. Change default administrative password on wirelessrouter/access point to a secured password.2. Enable at least 128-bit WEP encryption on both card andaccess point. Change your WEP keys periodically. If equipmentdoes not support at least 128-bit WEP encryption, considerreplacing it. Although there are security issues with WEP, itrepresents minimum level of security, and it should be enabled.3. Change the default SSID on your router/access point to a hardto guess name. Setup your computer device to connect to thisSSID by default. 4. Setup router/access point not to broadcast the SSID. The sameSSID needs to be setup on the client side manually. This featuremay not be available on all equipment. 5. Block anonymous Internet requests or pings. On each computerhaving wireless network card, network connection propertiesshould be configured to allow connection to Access PointNetworks Only. Computer to Computer (peer to peer) Connectionshould not be allowed. Enable MAC filtering. Deny association to wireless network forunspecified MAC addresses. Mac or Physical addresses areavailable through your computer device network connection setupand they are physically written on network cards. When addingnew wireless cards / computer to the network, their MACaddresses should be registered with the router /access point.Network router should have firewall features enabled anddemilitarized zone (DMZ) feature disabled. All computers should have a properly configured personalfirewall in addition to a hardware firewall. You should alsoupdate router/access point firmware when new versions becomeavailable. Locating router/access point away from strangers isalso helpful so they cannot reset the router/access point todefault settings. You can even try to locate router/access pointin the middle of the building rather than near windows to limitsignal coverage outside the building. There is no guarantee of a full protection of your wirelessnetwork, but following these suggested tips can definitelylessen your risk of exposing to attackers aiming at insecurenetworks.
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