Securing Your Wireless Network

Working from home while using a wireless local area network (WLAN) may lead to theft of sensitive information and hacker or virus infiltration unless proper measures are taken. As WLANs send information over radio waves, someone with a receiver in your area could be picking up the transmission, therefore gaining access to your computer. They could load viruses on to your computer which could be transferred to other computers on your network. Up to 75 per cent of WLAN users do not have basic security features installed, while 20 per cent are left completely open with the default configurations. It is recommended that wireless router/access point setup be always done though a wired client. You can setup your security by follow these steps: Change default admin password on wireless router/access point to a secured password. Change your WEP keys periodically. Change the channel your router uses to transmit and receive data on a regularly basis. Use encryption such as WEP and WPA. If equipment does not support at least 128-bit WEP encryption, consider replacing it. Change the default SSID on your router/access point to a hard to guess name. Setup your computer device to connect to this SSID by default. Setup router/access point not to broadcast the SSID. The same SSID needs to be setup on the client side manually. This feature may not be available on all equipment. On each computer having a wireless network card, network connection properties should be configured to allow connection to Access Point Networks Only. Full information can be found at my Free PC Security blog. Colin Richards Free PC Security cotojo.wordpress.com