Keeping Out The War Drivers

{mosgoogle}Let's face it, wireless rules. The ability to sit outside on the patio with the notebook and surf the internet while watching the babes walk by on their way to the beach is a techie's dream come true. However, wireless security today is a big concern for many people. In the past we used to leave our wireless network completely open so anyone can use it to access the internet. If all these people did was access the net, we wouldn't have a problem. But many "war drivers" open network for more devious purposes. This is why you absolutely must take security measures to lock down your wireless network.

The days of buying a wireless router and just hooking it up without turning on any of the security features are long gone. Only a fool would leave their network wide open. How tightly you want to lock down your wireless network depends on your level of paranoia. To help you out we have prepared a step by step how to on locking down your network from unwanted attacks. To serve you better we also rated the important of each security protocols on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important. Doing all the steps listed won't make your wireless network hacker proof but it will greatly reduce the risk of a security breach. At the bottom of each page, we list a recommend router - these are routers that have all the security features listed in this article.

Changing The Default Password - Importance: 10

This is like a no brainer step but so many people don't do it. It goes without saying that a password of admin or 1234 isn't going to trip up a lot of hackers. Yet many users never bother to change it. We have lost track of the number of time we have discovered a completely open network with the default password still in place. We could have logged into the router, changed the password and enable encryption plus some of the other security measures and completely lock the owner out. That renders his brand new Wi-Fi router useless to him unless he knows how to reset it.

The first thing you should do when setting up a new wireless router is to change the password to something less obvious than 1234. Try to use a password that you can remember that is very obscure and can't be found in the dictionary.

Recommended Router