Planning Security

Unless you work for the government or handle sensitive data on your computer,
you probably aren’t overly concerned about the privacy of the information
stored on your home network. Usually it’s not an issue anyway because
someone would have to break into your house to access your network. But if
you have a wireless network, the radio signals transmitted by your network
don’t automatically stop at the outside walls of your house. In fact, a neighbor
or even someone driving by on the street in front of your house can use
a computer and a wireless networking adapter to grab information right off
your computer, including deleting your files, inserting viruses, and using your
computer to send spam — unless you take steps to protect your network.
The original security technology for Wi-Fi equipment was Wired Equivalent
Privacy (WEP). Perhaps the most well-publicized aspect of Wi-Fi wireless networking
is the fact that the WEP security feature of Wi-Fi networks can be
hacked (broken into electronically). Hackers have successfully retrieved
secret WEP keys used to encrypt data on Wi-Fi networks. With these keys,
the hacker can decrypt the packets of data transmitted over a wireless network.
Since 2003, the Wi-Fi Alliance has been certifying and promoting a
replacement security technology for WEP: Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and
the newer but closely related WPA2). WPA/WPA2 is based on an IEEE standard
effort known as 802.11i (so many 802.11s huh?). This technology, which
makes cracking a network’s encryption key much more difficult, is standard
in most Wi-Fi access points and network adapters available now. As discussed
earlier in this chapter, in the section “Certification and Standards Support,”
look for Wi-Fi Alliance certifications for WPA equipment.
Any Wi-Fi gear that you buy should support the latest security certification —
WPA2. Don’t accept any less and don’t forget to turn on your network’s
security.
See Chapter 9 for a full discussion of how to set up basic security for your
wireless home network.
Other useful security features to look for when buying an AP include
Network Address Translation (NAT), which we discuss earlier in this
chapter
Virtual Private Network (VPN) pass-through that allows wireless network
users secure access to corporate networks
Monitoring software that logs and alerts you to computers from the
Internet attempting to access your network
Logging and blocking utilities that enable you to log content transmitted
over the network as well as to block access to given Web sites