In order to adequately protect your wireless home network you need to have an awareness of the threats that are out there and what can be done about them. The best ways to ensure your security are by using a legitimate antivirus/anti-spyware program, an effective firewall in your router and setting up wireless encryption on your wireless router.
A wireless network introduces a new level of vulnerability to your privacy through the airwaves. On a wired network a good firewall will stop most Internet hacker attempts and your antivirus program will handle most attempts by trojan viruses to hijack your machine. But now that you've gone wireless your network data is being broadcast through the walls of your house and out onto the street. How do you protect yourself against neighbors who want to surf the Internet on your dime and the geeky teenager with the packet sniffing program next door?
The answer is Wireless Encryption
Before we get into wireless encryption let's make sure your networked computers at least have the basics in terms of protection. Any computer connected to the Internet needs to have:
Antivirus Software
There are tons of scripts, viruses and spyware that can find their way to your computer through emails and downloaded programs which can muck up your operating system and compromise your privacy. A good antivirus program with updated virus definitions will do the trick. This means you have to do more than just purchase and install it. You also have to keep it updated.
Firewall Program
If you have a firewall program such as installed and you take a peak at the logs you may be shocked at the amount of attempts to gain access to your computer from unknown sources. A good firewall program will follow a set of rules to block attempts to gain access or take control over your computer. Many home network routers have a built-in SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) firewall functionality which you will also want to take advantage of.
Anti Spyware
Spyware actually falls under a different category than viruses. While a virus is designed to do wreak havoc on your Operating System malware is more insidious and seeks to operate behind the scenes undetected. Many spyware programs exist just to collect data about you and your surfing habits and send that information back to who ever launched it as market research information. While your operating system may still function normally you will notice slowness and erratic behavior of some programs over time.
Windows Updates
Microsoft regularly publishes new vulnerabilities that have been discovered in their operating systems and patches needed to fix them. Turning your Microsoft updates to automatic will make the process of keeping your system updated almost unnoticeable except for the occasional forced reboot.
Wireless Encryption
So you've set up a home network using all the steps mentioned above to secure it. Right? Good. If you want to go wireless you also need to consider wireless encryption. If you don't you might as well be installing network jacks into the curb on the street in front of your home to give passerby's access to your network any time they want it.
The developers of the 802.11 standard were aware of this threat to consumer privacy early on so they designed a system of encrypting data that makes a wireless network just as secure as a wired network. They called it WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy. WEP worked fine for a while but the way it was designed combined with increasing computer speeds made it easier to decode and decipher the WEP Key. Once someone in a car out on the street has your WEP key they may as well be sitting in your living room or watching over your shoulder.
As a result of the need for a newer, stronger encryption method WPA or Wi-Fi Protected Access was developed. Not only is WPA more secure it's more user-friendly. A plain text pass phrase is all that's needed to secure your devices. The ugly hexadecimal keys of WEP are gone. The major improvement of WPA over WEP is the patterns of encryption it uses are much more random and the key actually changes according to a time frame you can specify! WPA has a new big brother called WPA2 which uses the advanced AES method of encryption. While WEP can be cracked in a few hours WPA2 and AES has yet to be cracked.
The safeguards mentioned here are all very common and easy to come by. Excellent Internet Security Suites are now available in most electronics stores. Virtually all routers come with built-in SPI firewalls and manufacturers of network devices have made great strides to make setting up wireless encryption on your wireless network as easy as possible. By following the guidelines in this article and technology that's available you should have no trouble securing your wireless home network.
Setting Up A Wireless Network?
J Richard Jones has been supporting computers and networks for over 15 years. Visit his site to learn more about setting up a wireless network.
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