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[Safety continued from page 2 ]
do is run all network traffic through an encryption key that all computers that are going to connect to network must have, as well as the network access point.This makes it so that two things can’t happen that make it easy to break into networks. First, one can’t talk to the workstations/routers with this key enabled; any requests made that are not encrypted with this key are ignored. Second, it makes it so that if your traffic is captured with a packet sniffer, much more drastic means are necessary to find out what that traffic contains, while in an unencrypted network, it would literally be as simple as plain text.
The second step is to enable MAC address validation (2a).
MAC addresses are a unique set of characters that are assigned to a network controller (ie: Ethernet card, wireless card, etc…). What enabling this does is only allow a certain group of MAC addresses access the wireless network, (2b) so if the network key was somehow compromised, entry still wouldn’t occur unless the MAC address trying to access the network matches one of those on the list. Unfortunately, these addresses can be easily spoofed, but combining this with an encryption protocol makes your network inaccessible to all but the most persistent hackers.
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| Figure 2: Settting up the MAC address filter |
The last step, and the coup-de-grace of wireless security is to turn off SSID broadcast. (3)Every wireless router, by default, is like a beacon that broadcasts the name of the network across its range to make it easy to find and connect to. Now if we set up an encryption key, enable MAC address filtering, set our network as default so that it automatically connects, then turn off the SSID broadcast, then our network will be pretty much invisible! Any normal wireless scans wouldn’t even turn up the name of the network, making it near impossible to even find, much less infiltrate.
With these 3 simple steps we can make a wireless network as secure, if not more secure, than a traditional wireless network, while increasing ease-of-use, functionality, and performance. Following these steps can make a wireless network a very feasible safe network structure for all, all the way, up to large corporations. 