If you've started a wireless network, you'll know that it is important to keep it secure. It is in fact quite simple for anyone to hack into an unsecured wireless network. This is dangerous as you could be exposing your important and personal files to others. This article shows how you can use 3 techniques to secure a given wireless network. Read it to understand how to protect your valuable systems from attack. They are not difficult to implement - and you get immense protection and value by rolling these strategies out.

1. Disable Broadcast SSID

And here's the real problem ... most wireless access equipment broadcast their SSIDs to the public by default! If you can imagine, this is like standing in public crying out your credit card number. So do make sure you turn it off.
 

2. Turn on WEP

You know how it is ... sometimes you read in the papers or in the manual of a wireless router about this cryptic thing called 'WEP'. Well, time to listen up carefully ...

WEP is a encryption protocol that tells the wireless router that you use how to authenticate users logging on to your network. Think of it as the main door into your wireless network. Now, this 'WEP' lock can have a 128-bit keys or a 64-bit key. 128-bit keys are more difficult to crack and should be turned on.

You need to consult your wireless router manual to see how to turn on WEP. Typically what you need to do is type in a password, e.g. 'hellodog' or something like that. The router will then generate a hexadecimal for you (e.g. '02AB9802FF37EE62') and you need to write this down. You will use it when setting up Windows XP to access your wireless network.

For more information on setting up a wireless network, check out this guide.
 

3. Set MAC address restrictions

Another point to note is to set up MAC address restrictions. The key thing here to understand is that most equipment (e.g. desktops and laptops) have a hardware MAC address that looks like 00-0C-38-55-F4-AD. You can use find this out in Windows by typing: ipconfig /all at the command prompt.

Once know the MAC addresses of all the PCs that are allowed to access your network, you can set up a MAC address restriction list in your wireless router. This stops anyone with unauthorized hardware from connecting to your network.
 

Conclusion