|
How to Keep Your Home Wireless Network Secure
Working from home has its advantages,
including no commute, a more flexible work schedule
and fresh coffee and home-cooked meals whenever you
want. But 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, thus gaining access to your computer.
They could load viruses on to your laptop which could
be transferred to the company's network when you go
back to work.
Up to 75 per cent of WLAN users do not
have standard security features installed, while 20
per cent are left completely open as default configurations
are not secured, but made for the users to have their
network up and running ASAP.
It is recommended that wireless router/access
point setup be always done though a wired client.
Change default administrative password
on wireless router/access point to a secured password.
Enable at least 128-bit WEP encryption
on both card and access point. Change your WEP keys
periodically. If equipment does not support at least
128-bit WEP encryption, consider replacing it.
Although there are security issues with
WEP, it represents minimum level of security, and it
should be enabled.
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.
Block anonymous Internet requests or
pings.
On each computer having wireless network
card, network connection properties should be configured
to allow connection to Access Point Networks Only. Computer
to Computer (peer to peer) Connection should not be
allowed.
Enable MAC filtering. Deny association
to wireless network for unspecified MAC addresses. Mac
or Physical addresses are available through your computer
device network connection setup and they are physically
written on network cards. When adding new wireless cards
/ computer to the network, their MAC addresses should
be registered with the router /access point.
Network router should have firewall
features enabled and demilitarized zone (DMZ) feature
disabled.
You can test your hardware and personal
firewalls using Shields Up test available at http://www.grc.com.
All computers should have a properly
configured personal firewall in addition to a hardware
firewall.
Update router/access point firmware
when new versions become available.
Locate router/access point away from
strangers so they cannot reset the router/access point
to default settings.
Locate router/access point in the middle
of the building rather than near windows to limit signal
coverage outside the building.
While none of the measure suggested
above provides full protection as countermeasures exist,
a collection of suggested measures will act as a deterrent
against attacker when other insecure networks represent
easier targets.
1howto.com
--------------------------------------------------
Please
Share Your Tips with Us
|
