The following are the items most often at risk.
* Thieves can steal your sensitive personal and business data.
* Harmful viruses and worms can infiltrate your network, even
evading your anti-virus software. * Hackers can hijack your
Wi-Fi to spam or attack others – and you could be liable.
If you don’t want your network to fall victim to snooping or
people ‘borrowing’ your bandwidth, then you’re going to need to
lock down your network. Luckily for you, all wireless technology
has encryption built in — it’s just a matter of turning it on.
WEP Vs. WPA
Security on wireless networks does have a flaw, though — there
are two completely incompatible standards, which makes it a pain
to set up a whole network to use encryption.
How did this happen? Well, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was
the original standard for encryption over 802.11 wireless
networks. Back in 2001, though, a research paper was published
called ‘Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4′. This
paper demonstrated critical flaws in the security of WEP that
made it trivial for someone to break into, if they wanted to.
Essentially, it is too easy to discover the secret ‘key’ used
for WEP, and once you have the key, you can get into the network
and stay in for as long as you want. People quickly recognised
that it was almost useless to use WEP on their network — but by
the time its weaknesses were discovered, the WEP method was
built into almost every piece of wireless equipment out there.
The WEP standard had to be replaced, and in 2003 WPA (Wi-Fi
Protected Access) was introduced as its replacement, fixing most
of its flaws. WPA is much more secure than WEP. Unfortunately,
though, WPA took a long time to reach the market, and WPA
devices were expensive when they were released. Combine this
with the fact that WEP is still the default in a lot of software
(because it’s supported by more devices), and you end up in the
confused situation we’re in today.
Always Use WPA
If you’re going to enable encryption, always use WPA. Devices
bought after 2003 or so should be compatible with it, as the
upgrade was made a mandatory part of the standard.
It is true that WEP is better than nothing — it will, at least,
deter the casual intruder, who won’t try any more than
double-clicking to get onto your network. WEP can also make you
less of a target for wardrivers, since there will be so many
completely open networks that they might as well use instead.
However, it’s silly to use WE nowadays when WPA is so easily
available.
Turning on Encryption
Turning on encryption in Windows isn’t too difficult, but it
does involve quite a lot of clicking — no wonder so few people
bother.
The first step is to turn on encryption for your wireless router
or access point. The exact method for this will vary between
devices, but you can usually do it by visiting the router or
access point’s configuration page in your web browser, finding
the encryption settings, and then choosing WPA. If you have any
trouble, refer to your manual.
Once you’ve done that, you need to change the encryption
settings on your computers. Open the ‘View Available Wireless
Networks’ screen by right-clicking on your wireless connection
in the bottom-right of the screen and choosing it from the menu
that appears. Then click ‘Change advanced settings’. Go to the
Wireless Networks section of this box, click your network’s
name, and then click Properties.
Now, where it says ‘Network authentication’, select WPA. Click
OK on everything you’ve opened. Once you’ve done that — this is
the really fun part — you’re going to have to do it for every
computer on your network!
It’s Easier for New Networks
While the process is quite troublesome for existing networks,
it’s much easier for ones that haven’t been set up yet. You’ll
still need to turn on encryption at the wireless router or
access point, but once you’ve done that you can set up
encryption as you set up the network using the Wireless Network
Setup Wizard.
Unfortunately (and stupidly) Windows now turns on WEP by default
when you set up your wireless network. This means that each time
you go through the wizard, you need to remember to tick the box
on the third screen that says ‘Use WPA encryption instead of
WEP’. Still, it’s easier than changing the settings manually
later on.
About the author:
Original Source: Articles-Galore.com
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of CyberTech SoftShop
Suppliers of the DeadEasy
Ebook Maker and Publishing Wizard.