So You Think Your Wi-Fi Network is Secure?

Wi-Fi networks deliver tremendous benefits. They supply the ability to connect to the Web nearly anywhere at anytime. You can connect in your home, office, or the coffee shop without being tethered to a wall jack, and Wi-Fi is built into most laptop PC’s.

Wi-Fi is plus easy to set up whether you don’t think about defense. Out of the box, you can quickly turn on your wireless network, and connect your without much effort. Without defense however, everyone else can connect to your network with the same ease. whether you don’t take the steps to secure your wireless network everything you do by the wireless network can additionally be seen by hackers up to a mile away.

Who Needs Wireless protection?

One of the common reasons why users don’t secure their Wi-Fi networks is that no one wants access to their network or that there is no urgent knowledge on the network to concern about. Hacking is less about joy-riding on someone else’s network and more about the financial payoff that can be gained by stealing confidential or personal info by the network. In fact, by half of cyber crimes are now committed by Wi-Fi networks, considering they supply anonymity that wired networks don’t supply.

With a poorly secured Wi-Fi network, a wireless hacker can read your mail, see the websites you visit, and even access files on your system that aren’t properly secured. Your e-mail username and password are easily picked off an unsecured Wi-Fi network when every moment your e mail is updated. Once your e-mail history is compromised, it becomes very easy to gain personal identity.

Another common misconception is that Wi-Fi can only be accessed from 300 feet away. With a $50 antenna, a hacker can access your Wi-Fi network from a mile away, out of sight and undetectable.

War drivers looking for unsecured networks, locate and record Wi-Fi networks. They soon after share those locations on websites such as www.wigle.net for other war drivers and hackers to find and user those networks.

Why Are So Many Networks Unsecured?

While setting up a Wi-Fi network is easy, turning on protection takes some technical expertise and the ability to understand terms like WEP, WPA, 802.1x, and EAP. While wireless equipment manufacturers supply access to these protection parameters, very few of them manufacture it easy to understand, or easy to set-up.

Wi-Fi safety measure for Dummies

There are 4 basic levels of Wi-Fi safety measure: “Open” (unsecured), WEP, WPA-PSK, and 802.1X. Let’s walk through these techno-acronyms and explain these basic levels of safety measure in less technical terms.

• “Open”
  is just that, open to all comers without any basic level of safety measure. Like leaving your front door unlocked for anyone to enter, open networks are just a poor view.

• WEP is the lowest level of safety measure available on most Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, WEP have fundamental flaws that manufacture it easy to hack and software on the Web can crack WEP defense in 10 minutes. WEP is equivalent to locking your screen door; it may keep your neighbor out, but it takes little effort to break in.

• WPA is the successor to WEP that is more difficult to crack. WPA is comparable to having a loner lock on your front door, and giving a key to everyone you want to give access to. Keys can be shared or walked away with when someone leaves the network. The challenge with WPA is removing someone requires the entire network to be re-keyed and new keys re-distributed to valid users.

• “802.1X” is called enterprise-level protection considering it provides the highest level of Wi-Fi shield available. 802.1X is widely deployed by Fortune 500 companies and eliminates the common key problem by providing a different key for each valid user every date they enter the network. that is analogous to the room key used in hotels. Each authorized user gets a new rare key every duration they enter the network valid only for the date they are on the network.

802.1x typically requires a RADIUS server, which takes training and some technical work to deploy and maintain. that put the highest level of Wi-Fi safety measure out of reach for most small and mid-sized businesses considering of implementation costs.

Products like WiTopia’s SecureMyWiFi Business Edition addresses the need for small and mid-sized businesses to quickly and easily deploy strong Wi-Fi safety measure. It can deliver 802.1x enterprise level safety measure for small and midsize business that can be set up in less than 15 minutes without any wireless or protection expertise.

It’s crucial that wireless network users understand the dangers of unsecured networks, and properly secure their networks. Open (unsecured) and WEP are poor approaches to Wi-Fi shield. WPA, while complex, offers a base level of defense, and 802.1x offers the best defense available. Businesses are best advised to use 802.1x through either RADIUS server or the more simplified approach that WiTopia offers.