International Law

Secure your Wireless connection

By Rohan Sharma

• You should encrypt your wireless transmissions, but WEP is definately not the way to go. WPA>(Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption has been out for at least a couple of years and all new laptops and wireless access points support it now. It is much more secure than>WEP (64 or 128). WPA2 has also been available for a while and as of March 13 2006 WPA2 certification is mandatory for>all new devices wishing to be Wi-Fi certified.

• Instead of turning off DHCP, restrict the number of DHCPconnections to the specific number of hardware devices. Ifyou're already filtering for MAC addresses no one else isgoing to grab a free IP address if a laptop is not connectedto network .Then when on the road and at home, the user can connectwithout having to change network settings.

• Additional security: while this isn't really security, ithelps take your network out of the limelight of routineguessing. Default IP address ranges are typically192.168.x.x.Make yours even more unique by making it in the 10. range orthe 172. range. This is more likely to be something theaverage person, that thinks they can hit your router, won'tthink about, or even know about.

Full post as published by Lex Evangelist on October 03, 2007 (boomark / email).