The Zone

It's been said many times before but those new to networking sometimes forget about it:

Secure your Wireless Network!

Wireless networking broadcasts connectivity in an area around it, and if you don't secure your wireless connection, anyone within range can connect to it, and in the least, ride off your Internet connection (if you have one), for free.  This can affect your Internet speed as bandwidth is leeched off by others.

However, it is more dangerous if you're keeping sensitive data connected to your wireless network, and anyone can connect and start downloading, modifying, or uploading to your network (and the devices connected to it).

This is exactly what happened in a real-life case scenario...

A data breach occured at TJX, Minnesota (in the USA), where over 45 million credit card numbers and more than 450,000 driver's license were stolen when the wireless network, using only WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), was hacked into.

Someone, using a telescope-shaped antenna, cracked into the TJX central database. The eventual cost of the TJX fiasco could exceed USD$1 billion — not including the numerous lawsuits filed against the retailer, obviously.

WEP is an outdated wireless encryption technology which was broken since 2001, that's why there is WPA (Wireless Protected Access) and WPA2.  If you have a wireless router, WEP only serves to deter people from hacking into your wireless network - but it doesn't stop them. 

If you want to be more paranoid, access your wireless router and hide your wireless network from being broadcasted. Also, turn off DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) - so that connecting computers can't be assigned an IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is required to connect to a network. Go to each  connecting computer in your network and assign their own IP address.  This way you can keep track of who is connected to your network.  Lastly, you might want to turn on MAC (Machine Addressable Code) filtering in the wireless router so that only computers with a specific MAC address can connect to your network. MAC is unique in that every network device in the world has its own MAC address. Of course, MAC addresses can also be cloned, but the more locks you put on your network, the harder it is to break it, and it might give crackers a second thought.

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