Securing a Wireless Network

When the network was introduced and everything was connected with wires securing your network was a relatively easy task. After all any intruders that wanted to hack your internal network would actually have to connect to your network physically. The introduction of WiFi has changed all that and security for the network has go that little bit more difficult.

Page

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Wireless networking has very quickly become the choice for both business and home users alike. The reason for this is simple. The wireless network is easier to set up both in software and physically. The wireless network is cheaper to setup than a wired network and the wireless network is less obtrusive than its wired counterpart. The downside is that the wireless network is essentially far less secure than a wired network. Anyone with a portable computer can easily get in range of a wireless network and attempt to hack into your network. With the increasing popularity of wireless networks you may not need to move anywhere to be in range of a number of private wireless networks.

If you had a traditional wired setup at home you may well have not bothered about securing it. Lets face it if someone has broken into your house they could just take the whole computer rather than try and physically hack your network. If you have setup a wireless network at home to share files between your computers or just to share the internet connection then its time to learn about setting up a secure network. This really is an essential part of home networking these days. With the amount of use a PC has in the home any amounts of data can be stolen from you and used against you. The scary part is any intruder to your network could be down the street way out of your reach and totally unknown to you.

Many people mistakenly think that the presence of a hardware firewall with their wireless router is enough to protect them against intruders to their network. This is only partly true, a wireless router with a built in firewall will protect you against intruders trying to access your computer from the internet. They do not protect you against intruders that have accessed your internal network or access point. Once someone has accessed your internal network they have access to everything that you do if you haven't adequate security.

Following some simple steps in this guide you can setup a secure wireless network to prevent prying eyes from accessing your data and using your resources. We will show you how to encrypt the data sent over your network, stop broadcasting your network to machines other than your own and show you the different types of security available to you without you having to spend any more money. Wireless routers come with built in security features but are not activated by default to allow for an easy setup process. We show you how to activate these security measures to give you a little more peace of mind when using a wireless network.