Wireless Network Use

With any network connection, sensitive information should be transmitted through a secure channel, such as secure sockets layer (SSL), which is commonly used to protect information sent over the web.

This protection is especially important over a wireless network. Data sent over a wireless network can be intercepted within several dozen feet of your computer. To help protect against this sort of attack wired equivalent privacy (WEP) was created to encrypt data being sent over a wireless network. However weaknesses have been found in the implementation that can render WEP useless.

The easiest solution to protect your information is to not transmit any sensitive information over a wireless network.

What network medium are you using?

Many computers, especially notebook computers, have both wired and wireless network connections. It is possible that while a computer may have a wired connection plugged in, the wireless network card is the point through which the computer is connecting to the internet. This could lead to some confusion and result in a user transmitting sensitive information across the wireless network. The solution is to set your computer's wired connection with a higher priority than the wireless connection. Consult your operating system's manual on how to do this.

Are your actions secure?

Web browsers have built-in capabilities to encrypt information you sent over the network using SSL. The easiest way to check whether your information is being transmitted securely or not is to look for a closed-lock icon in the status bar of your web browser (usually on the right-side). If you see an open-lock or no lock icon at all then chances are your information is not being encrypted.

Almost all commerce websites support SSL and it is good practice to check and make sure information is being encrypted through the web browser. This protects information from being intercepted on the wireless network. But what about other computer network activity?

Accessing and copying files across the local network is, most often, done without any sort of encryption or protection being applied. This means that by accessing a document on the network through a wireless connection you could be unwittingly sharing that information with anyone within several dozen feet of your computer.

E-mail and instant messaging are also usually done without any sort of protection and are easily intercepted over a wireless network. Be careful about your actions when accessing the wireless network.

Last Modified: May 7, 2008