Wireless Security (Part 1)

Why should you worry about wireless security?

Wireless can be convenient and easy to use, eliminates the need for wiring and allows you to be connected to your network without being in your office freeing you to work where ever you want (as long it is in range of your wireless access point). Because the wireless signal does not respect the physical boundaries of your location wireless security is critical to the security of your data. Imagine that you have a network jack on the outside of your building that anyone could connect to and use. How would that affect your view of security?

There are people that look for free bandwidth for their computers. They will drive around and detect wireless networks and connect to them. They use high gain antennas to gather signal and so they could be further away than you would expect and still be able to use your bandwidth. In most cases they are just looking for free bandwidth however once they are on your network they can look for unsecure file shares and grab information from your hard disk.

Also the criminal element looks for open wireless connections and then uses the connection for illegal purposes. This can open you up to violation of the terms you agreed to when you joined your ISP, causing possible service interruption or cancelation of your service.

Because you can receive further than you transmit with Wireless, your network traffic could be sniffed without connecting to your network. People could listen to your personal information as it goes out on the internet without any indication your data is being watched.

As you can see, the same attributes that make Wi-Fi so appealing to users are the same attributes that make it potentially insecure. You need to secure your Wi-Fi networks.

Next week I would talk a little about how to secure your wireless network.

Happy computing,

Thomas Clark, CTO
Elk Creek Technology Partners
http://www.elkcreektechpartners.com/