If your mother uses wifi at home to send you e-mail, and your home network is not protected by WEP or WPA, what reasons would you suggest to her for enabling one of these two protocols at home if the liability of reading those e-mails still exists once her message leaves your home, on it’s way to school?
I would not just inform my mother, but also anyone using a wireless router that when one sends or receives information from a device that anyone within signal range might also be able to obtain the file. This means it is very important to protect data that is being sent via wireless. At home networks should have some form of security protection, such as, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). WEP is designed to provide an equivalent level of security to a wired local area network for home and office wireless connections. It provides security by encrypting data over radio waves; however WEP is known for serious flaws. Eavesdropping is made easy with wireless networks because they send data using radio waves. In 2002, WPA security emerged as a protocol designed for wireless security in response to the weaknesses researchers discovered in WEP.
There are loopholes in both protocols that allow outside users access, such as, weak encryption keys. This does not mean that the WEP and WPA home network security systems are worthless. These two protocols decrease the liability of unwanted access, thus any protection is better than none at all. Personally, I would recommend the most up-to-date version of WPA. According to an article on TopBits about WPA the protocol offers the following protection benefits:
- Requires an authentication server by using 802.1X.
- Requires re-keying through RADIUS protocols.
- Centralizes management of user credentials.
- Implements a structured offset to discourage hacking re-occurrences.
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