Wi-Fi shield for Dummies

There are 4 basic levels of Wi-Fi protection: “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 concept.

• WEP is the lowest level of protection 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 protection 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 individual 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 shield considering it provides the highest level of Wi-Fi protection available. 802.1X is widely deployed by Fortune 500 companies with a RADIUS Server and eliminates the common key problem by providing a strange key for each valid user every moment they enter the network. that is analogous to the room key used in hotels. Each authorized user gets a new strange key every date they enter the network valid only for the duration they are on the network.