Securing your wireless connection is especially important since you don't always have a specific service provider as a middleman to help track those folks down who only have bad intent for you and your home and business networks. Radio waves are easy to intercept and there are plenty of free sneaky programs available to help. But the worst and most common security hole found by security consultants is equal to you just welcoming the hackers in and leaving your keys under the doormat for them. What is it that over 50% of businesses (and many government agencies) do wrong? THEY LEAVE THE DEFAULT ADMINISTRATION NAME AND PASSWORDS IN PLACE THAT THE MANUFACTURERS GIVE EVERYONE WHO BUYS THEIR WIRELESS NETWORKING EQUIPMENT! Read that in capital letters. It belongs in caps it is so obvious! It costs nothing to fix but a little time. Do it. Now!

Allowing your network to broadcast your unique service set identifier, the SSID, as part of the regular communications is often advised to be bad. But certain processes require this SSID broadcasting to make connections, namely some Microsoft operating systems. Technically, some wireless standards also "require" it to be broadcast to get a connection. If your network configuration requires SSID broadcasts, and you just decide to rename your SSIDs as a "backup" security measure, at least make sure they are named in a non-obvious way while you are discouraging those casual peepers. No names like payroll. (I've seen that) But be aware that even non-broadcasting networks may still receive probes from others that will receive a plain text version of your SSID in return, so neither of those commonly recommended SSID security solutions is really a solution, or secure, but they may keep the amateur war driver at bay. The only saving grace is that in crowded areas the hackers may go after the numerous less-secured networks they find and not use any extra effort to try to discover non-broadcasting "hidden" networks near them.

A more effective solution of securing a wireless network is to use a protocol that offers good encryption foundations. WEP does not. WPA and WPA2 are the least levels you should consider. Your equipment documentation will mention what protocols your wireless network devices support. Encrypting anything that goes across your airwaves is essential. Too many ready made tools make it easy to hack mobile communications. Why not make it as hard as you can to do so? WPA2 uses the advanced encryption standard (AES), which is the government standard for security as this is written. The longer the "key strings" the hacker has to crack, the less likely they can get into your system in the time they have access to it.

A very determined hacker will always be able to get a good enough antenna to snoop on even the lowest powered transmissions, a better tool to automate their hacking, more knowledge, maybe some inside help through social engineering, or maybe just get lucky. The point is, by following basic security practices, even if its just keeping anti-malware software and system patches up to date, you'll stop most amateur hackers. Security threats are fluid and security requires continuity to be effective. No guarantees here except the guarantee that if you have no security in place your wireless network break in WILL occur. It's just a matter of when.

 The countdown is on for the unveiling of the US national broadband plan, that will "seek to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability and shall establish benchmarks for meeting that goal". Your input is invited. Sounds like a good idea to me!   Visit  http://broadband.gov  for more information

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