How To Secure Your Wi-Fi Network

How to Secure Your Wi-Fi Network?

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) have become quite popular in recent years, in both home and business networks. A wireless network is easy to set up and can quickly connect several computers without the need to run cables, which significantly reduces costs.

Wi-Fi network has a great concern due to the broadcast over the air, anyone who has a wireless transceiver can intercept the transmissions. You can secure wireless networks with several different steps, but the most important step is to implement a security protocol, such as Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2).

The following sections describe the primary security protocols available for wireless networks.

1. WEP

• At first when wifi was launched the whole community aligns started a security system which is now known as WEP (Wired equipment privacy) . 
• Around 17 years ago, this was a one of the most advanced security protocol. But, Now a day’s they are very easy to crack it therefore never use them.
• Due to the widely published vulnerabilities of WEP, the IEEE deprecated the use of WEP in 2004. 

2. WAP

• Wi-Fi Protected access (WPA) was an interim replacement for WEP.
• It provided a solution for WEP. But, this protocol is for the very short time, With this one more protocol added in to the family WPA2.

3. WPA

• WPA2 is the permanent replacement for WPA. WPA2 uses a stronger cryptographic then WEP and WPA.
• WPA2 works in a two different modes WPA2 and WPA2 PSK.
• PSK means preshared key.

WPA2 is more secure than WPA. It is the full implementation of 802.11i standard for securing a wireless network.

WPA2 uses a very secure encryption algorithm AES(i.e. Advanced encryption standard) and provides a high level of security than WPA. WPA uses a TKIP(Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) encryption standard for encrypting the data.

AES(Advanced encryption standard) is uncrackable by even the advanced skills hackers, that’s is the reason for the security of WPA2.

Stronger encryption is the main reason behind the security of the WPA2.

• WPA2 has designed in two modes for different types of network.
• WPA2 PSK is intended for the use of small office and home network.
• Each wireless device is authenticated with the same 256 bit key.

It is always recommended to select WPA2/PSK while setting the password.

We cannot say that, by selecting WPA2/PSK will save us from hacking issue. It is basically a most secure encryption types. So, don’t create a simple password like demo or test. It can be easily cracked by the brute force attack. Password must be the multiple combination of letters, symbols and numbers.

Conclusion:

If you are using a older versions router there might not be latest encryption types till time. You can try using MAC filtering. If your router does not support too. I request you to kindly change the router.
You can also provide the minimum security to Wi-Fi by disabling  the SSID, Which lets you to hide the Wi-Fi network publically and add a level of security to your Wi-Fi.

Some security experts have reported cracking WPA2, though their techniques have not been freely available to the public or reviewed by peers.