Wireless Networking Security

One of the biggest problems with wireless networking devices is that right out of the box, they provide no security. Vendors go out of their way to make it easy to set up their devices, so usually the only thing that you have to do to join a wireless network is turn your wireless devices on and let them find each other. Sure, from a configuration point of view, this is great-but from a security point of view, it's a disaster!

Further, you have to consider that your network's data packets float through the air on radio waves instead of zipping safely along wrapped up inside network cabling. What's to stop an unscrupulous network tech with the right equipment from grabbing those packets out of the air and reading that data?

To address these issues, wireless networks use three methods: MAC address filtering, authentication, and data encryption. The first two methods secure access to the network itself, and the third secures the data that's moving around the network. All three of these methods require you to configure the WAPs and wireless devices. Let's take a look.