Wireless Networks at Home
When Billy Bob from the cable company comes over to your house to hook up your modem and wireless router, there is one thing he leaves out. Security!
Every time I go on site to a clients home for PC work, it seems like the cable guys left their wireless network insecure. How did they do this you might ask? By displaying the SSID of the network and leaving it unencrypted. These are all things that your typical non-techy stud can do… they just need a… why?
Conceivably, anyone within 100ft(+/-) range of your wireless router can sniff out and recreate your network traffic. This is everything you do… even emails and pictures.
For starters, one thing I like to do is turn off my SSID (name of a wireless network) so it isn’t broadcast over the air. This is a simple security measure that will help thwart hacking attempts on your network, because they will now need to determine your SSID.
The next level of security I would recommend is encryption, such as WEP, WPA & WPA2. These can all be setup rather easily after logging into your router and looking at the security settings. All you need to do is select the encryption you would like to use, enter a key (write it down so you can connect on your wireless devices) save the changes, reboot and refresh and you are already more secure than 75% of the people on your street.