Summary

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Regardless of the particular brand or model of access point that you choose for your home network, by default it is set up very insecurely. At a minimum, four basic security measures should be enabled:

1. Change the default Service Set Identifier (SSID).

2. Disable the SSID broadcast.

3. Enable 128-Bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption.

4. Filter by Media Access Control (MAC) address.

These steps are enough in most cases to protect low-traffic wireless networks used at home. It is important to use all four of these measures in order to deploy your wireless network using a layered security approach. While it is true that no network is completely secure, enabling these security measures on your wireless network reduces the risk of becoming an easy target and increases the likelihood that a prospective attacker will move on to a wireless network that does not employ the same precautions.

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