More Wireless Security Steps

Enabling encryption is the most critical step to securing your wireless network. With that completed, there are a couple more simple steps you can take to make your wireless network secure. These steps by themselves will not provide bullet-proof security, but they do add to the security you have just implemented and they only take a few moments each to implement. First, we can stop “advertising” to other wireless NICs. Then, we can make sure the firewall function is enabled on the wireless router. Finally, we can make sure our NICs do not unintentionally roam to other wireless routers. These steps are discussed in the next few sections.

Stop Advertising Your Wireless Network

By default, wireless routers are set up to broadcast their SSID to make it easy for wireless cards to locate the wireless network without having to know information in advance. Nice feature, bad security practice. Broadcasting the SSID of our wireless home network is entirely unnecessary. So, one step to securing our network is to shut it off. To do so, follow these steps: