Introduction
Setting up a wireless network at home can be a great convenience as compared to a wired network. However, there have been cases of attacks against this type of network, where by criminals have attempted and succeeded at gaining access to personal information like bank accounts and social security numbers, etc. Below are some measurers you can take to boost your home wireless security systems.
Step 1
The first and probably most important step in setting up an impregnable home wireless security system is coming up with a strong password for the system. Avoid using a password that is common for your other online account, like your email address or social-networking site. If you are still using the default login-in details provided by the manufacturer of the product, make sure to change them immediately.
Step 2
An easily visible Service Set Identifier (the name of your wireless network) helps to boost the probability of hacking incidences on your home wireless security system. Hiding your Service Set Identifier (SSID) may not deter serious hackers from accessing it, but it will keep your network out of the line-of-sight of botnet worms and low-tier security hackers. Most commercial firewall/grade router devices will allow you to do this.
Step 3
The common standard used by people in their home wireless security systems is WEP. However, this wireless encryption software has become compromised by easily accessible online tools like aircrack. You can stay ahead of the curve by using WPA, which is the current leading encryption standard. But, since technology is continuously evolving always keep checking up on the strength of your wireless encryption software and switch to a better standard if need be.
Tips
Just because you have installed a wireless encryption system does not mean that your home wireless security system is 100% secure. You can make it more difficult to hackers to access your network by implementing additional encryption software within the network itself. For instance, Security Sockets Layer (SSL) is useful for securing an e-commerce website. OPenSSH is effective at providing secure communications between computers on the same network, or across the internet.
Sources and Citations
Even though some pundits argue that restricting access to a wireless network by MAC addresses will not significantly boost your home wireless security system, it will most certainly help to ensure that your network is not one of the easily accessible networks that people prefer to attack. Just like hiding your network’s SSID, limiting access by MAC addresses
will reduce the vulnerability of your network from hackers.
Make sure to monitor home wireless security system for intruder attacks every once in a while. The more informed you are on what methods hackers may be using to attack or access your system, the more empowered you will be to defend against them. You can use a statistics generating tool to analyze logs of scan and access attempts on your network, and set up your log-in server to send you notifications anytime there are abnormal incidences in the network. If your network does not need to run on a 24 hour basis, 7 days a week, then you should consider shutting it off when you are not using it.
