Security for your wireless home network

Wireless security lock Many people who purchase wireless networking equipment for their home, retain the factory default configurations when setting up their home network. The problem with keeping these factory settings is their lack of security, and the risk you take in not changing them.

The signal from your home wireless network could be strong enough to reach outside your home. If this is the case, someone could use your wireless network to get access to your computer, or to show activity on the Internet that could be tracked back to your account. Potential threats like these are the reasons you must secure your wireless home network.

In order to protect your data, you need to encrypt it. Encryption technology scrambles data sent over networks so it cannot be easily read.

Your wireless equipment comes with either WEP (wired equivalent privacy) or WPA (WiFi protected access) encryption algorithms. There are devices that have both available, if you have this choice use WPA to secure your wireless network.

We recommend WPA because it evolved due to security issues that were discovered within WEP. WPA provides considerably stronger wireless data encryption in a number of ways — such as, restricting access to authenticated users, and by using stronger encryption schemes.

In order to use WPA, you need to keep these things in mind:

If any of your wireless devices are configured for WEP, in most cases, the WPA–set devices will revert to WEP, the less secure encryption, so that communication can still exist.

As stated above, if possible, use WPA to secure your wireless network. However, if you are not able to use WPA, use WEP. Having some sort of encryption on your wireless network is better than having none at all.

To further increase the security of your wireless home network, follow these steps:

  1. Change default administrator password: In most cases, your wireless equipment is pre-configured with a default administrator password to simplify the setup of your equipment. These passwords are rather simple, and are known, or easily guessed, by hackers.
  2. Enable encryption: As discussed earlier, enable WEP or WPA. Remember, if you choose to use WPA all your wireless equipment must be able to use WPA as well.
  3. Change the default SSID: The SSID (service set identifier) is the default network name of your wireless router. This isn't so much a security risk as it is a best practice – never go with the original manufacturer settings.
  4. Enable MAC address filtering: A MAC (Media Access Control) address is a unique hardware address that identifies a device on a network. Your wireless router may be able to keep track of the MAC addresses of all your wireless devices connected to it. If this is an available option, key in the addresses of your wireless equipment. This restricts the network to only allow connections from the devices you enter.
  5. Disable SSID broadcasts: This disables your network name from being broadcast over the air at regular intervals.
  6. Assign static IP addresses to your devices: Turn off DHCP on your wireless router, set a fixed range of IP addresses, and then set each of your connected devices to match this range.

It is important to mention that following these steps does not mean that your wireless network could not be compromised, but you have made it much more difficult to do so. With all these measures in place it would take a dedicated hacker to break into your network.

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