In this day and age it is very important that you have a safe and secure wireless connection to guard your personal information. People often neglect to add some simple security measures to prevent intruders hacking into their wireless connection and accessing their network.

Having security on your wireless connection should be a top priority as we are using the Internet to access our financial accounts and private or business e-mails.

What if I told you that someone could be looking at your files right now while you are on the Internet? Would you then think that security for your wireless connection was important?

Unencrypted Connections
Unencrypted connections are easy prey for the hackers. Even though they are easy to set up as everything connects automatically to your router and your wireless connection is on. encrypting your connection is as simple as adding a WAP or WEP password to your connection. If you do not encrypt your wireless connection hackers can easily eavesdrop on most of your wireless traffic.

No WEP or WPA
The Wired Equivalence Privacy (WEP) system was part of the original specification for wireless Internet, but within a few years of being released, hackers figured out how to break it. In 2007, three cryptoanalysts broke into a WEP connection using a 1.7 GHz laptop in less than 1 minute. They published their technique and now any hacker can use it to eavesdrop on any WEP-protected connection.

WEP has been officially replaced by Wifi Protected Access (WPA), but many old routers only support WEP. If you have an option to use WPA, please use it. If you don’t have support for WEP on your router and you’re concerned about security, you should see if the manufacturer of your router offers a firmware upgrade. Otherwise you should buy a newer router.

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