Conclusion

Right from page one we stated that the wireless age was a less secure age in terms of networking. The wired connections between a traditional network computers meant that anyone trying to get unauthorised access onto your network would have to physically connect into a hub on your network. With Wireless networks anyone in signal range could attempt to get onto your network and leave no physical trace of their presence. They wouldn't even have to be on your premises depending on the signal strength.

The first step is setting up an encryption protocol. Popular Choices are WEP, WPA and WPA2. WEP was found to be somewhat lacking in some security departments. That  having been said it will stop the casual snoopers from accessing your network. WEP is fine if you don't have anything too sensitive stored on your network. WPA was devised to cover the holes that were found into WEP and is the most popular choice today. Some older wireless network hardware may need to be upgraded to support WPA, fortunately visiting your manufacturers website should allow you to download upgraded firmware and/or software for your wireless device. WPA2 is new and offers government grade encryption. This encryption uses separate hardware for encoding and decoding and so it has to be inbuilt to your wireless device and older devices can't be upgraded to use WPA2.

This guide shows other ways to protect the data on your computers and networks. Each of them provides extra security but at the same time may take away some of the ease of use. Its up to the individual situation to decide how much security is needed and weigh that up against making the network easy to use and available to everyone who needs it.

My personal advice would be to put up with a small amount of inconvenience in order to secure your network. Plenty of people are after making easy money and identity theft is on the increase. Don't give criminals an easy ride and easy access to your data. Try not to be put off using a wireless network though, the technology has come along way and makes our life that little bit easier as long as we secure it correctly the wireless network will be a helpful tool for anyone with more than one computer in the home or office.