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| Improve wireless security to keep out the riffraff |
| Wireless networking is finally coming into its own, with new players and products entering the |
| market almost every day. This surge in wireless technology is great, unless you're the |
| administrator or power user tasked with making sure your wireless network is secure. There are a |
| handful of things you can do to improve wireless security and ensure that no one is snooping at |
| your data as it flies through the air. |
| First, wireless access points broadcast their service set identifiers (SSIDs) so potential clients can |
| identify wireless networks. Change the access point's SSID to a non-default, arbitrary string of |
| letters and numbers, or even better, turn off SSID broadcast if the access point offers that option. |
| Clients must then manually specify the wireless network rather than browsing for it. |
| Next, take a look at the access point's settings to see if it lets you configure it as a closed network. |
| This requires that the clients specify a station name rather than using Any as the station name or |
| Now take a look at the client wireless adapter's properties to see if it supports Wired Equivalent |
| Privacy (WEP), which requires that a certificate be used to authenticate network clients. WEP also |
| supports encryption to help prevent your data from being sniffed. |
| Make sure you use a non-default SNMP community string for any access points and clients that |
| use SNMP for management. Use a difficult-to-guess arbitrary string rather than the default public |
| Finally, take a look at IPSec as a means for securing traffic moving between wireless clients. If |
| properly implemented, IPSec can make your wireless network almost bulletproof. |
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