How Secure Is Your Wireless Network? Safeguarding Your Wi-Fi LAN

Basic Security Steps

In Chapter 1, we outlined some of the basic steps to take to secure wireless networks in a small deployment. For home use, I recommend:

• Disabling SSID broadcasts

• Enabling MAC filtering

• Enabling WEP and change keys frequently

• Using WPA, if available

These basic steps are simple things you can do to make your network safer. Unfortunately, these steps will only slow down—not stop—the dedicated attacker. Use these steps, but don't rely on them to keep your network 100% secure. They aren't perfect, but they are appropriate for many home environments, where the information assets are not critically valuable. If you need a higher level of security, use a VPN (see Chapter 8) or some of the methods used for enterprise security (see ...