AltRed Wireless Center

Some people recoil from using wireless networks for transmitting personal information. There is reason for caution, as the nature of wireless communication includes different security vulnerabilities from traditional networks. The majority of problems arise from hackers breaking into the same network that you are using. It should be noted that the chance of such an attack occurring increases exponentially when using a public Wi-Fi hotspot. In any case, certain wireless security best practices have emerged, allowing wireless users to breathe a sigh of relief.FilteringMAC ID: A rudimentary filtering algorithm that blocks access to computers without a certain Media Access Control (MAC) address.Static IP Addressing: Naming the IP addresses which can access your network helps block unwanted intruders.EncryptionWired Equivalent Privacy (WEP): The original encryption standard for wireless networks, but free open-source tools have made it almost transparent to hackers.Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA): A replacement for WEP which included Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) encryption. So far, WPA has proven more resilient than WEP security.AuthenticationExtensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)/Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol (LEAP)/Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP): Types of frameworks for encapsulating and transporting wireless data.HardwareSmart Cards/USB Tokens: Generate new encryption codes on a regular basis to keep data even more secure.