Cyber Security - WI-FI Best Practices

Wi-Fi Security Best Practices

It seems everyone from 5 to 95 relies on Wifi (Wireless connectivity) from time to time. Wifi networks can be very convenient and in some cases almost a necessity, but what we may be forgetting is that Wifi is not inherently secure.

If you are securing your Wireless access point, i.e. your wireless router, there are some things to consider. Do not broadcast your wireless network name, that allows anyone to try to connect to it. Make sure you require a complex password to access your router. A lot of devices ship with a default password like username: admin & password: password, or worse yet NO PASSWORD! If your device falls into this category, make sure to change those passwords to something unique and complex. By doing these steps, you make it much more difficult for people you do not know to connect to your wireless device.

Other best practices include patching your device frequently, and enable the highest level of available encryption to limit eavesdropping. Encryption scrambles the conversations between devices so that other devices on that network cannot read those conversations. 

Always assume though, that anyone you allow to connect to your wireless network, can connect to the other devices on your wireless network.

The same can be said for any wireless network that you choose to connect to. Assume that connecting to a wireless network allows everyone else on that same wireless network to connect directly to your device! Further, assume that they can try to eavesdrop, or read, the information that you are transmitting over that wireless network.

If you are connecting to any Wifi network that is not solely your own, you should not transmit any confidential information over that connection. Avoid online shopping, banking, and sensitive work that requires passwords or credit card information while using public Wi-Fi.

There are some things you can do to try to enhance the security of your device while accessing that connection: Enable a software firewall on your device to stop other devices from browsing your device, only transmit data over encrypted connections like VPNs or SSL websites, etc. But in general, the best practices say to not transmit any confidential information over a public Wifi network.

If you are connecting to a wireless network at a hotel, café, work, etc - be sure to confirm the name of the network and login procedures with appropriate staff to ensure that the network is legitimate. Cybercriminals can easily create a similarly named network hoping that users will overlook which network is the legitimate one. Also, most hotspots are not secure and do not encrypt the information you send over the Internet, leaving it vulnerable to cybercriminals.You can also avoid using public wireless networks by using your own mobile device as a Wifi network, also known as a wireless hotspot.

PASSWORDS

There is arguably no more important part of Information Security than strong passwords.
What passwords should be:

• They should be long, at least 14 characters for any passwords that secure confidential information.
• They should include 3 of the 4 types of characters (Upper case, lower case, numbers, special characters).
• Passphrases are a good choice. This is a sentence put together usually without spaces, instead of just one word or combination of letters and numbers.

A very good choice would be a passphrase, incorporating at least 3 of the 4 types of characters, and at least 14 characters in length. Most experts agree that it is more important to have longer password than more complex passwords.

What passwords should NOT be:

• Do not use any part of your username or actual name in your password.
• Do not use easily guessed or default passwords, such as “password” or “user.”
• Do not use any personally identifiable information in your password such as names of family members, birth dates, Social Security or phone number, etc.
• Do not use words that can be found in the dictionary. Password-cracking tools freely available online often come with dictionary lists that will try thousands of common names and passwords.

Also, passwords for every account, website, etc should be unique. Do not use the same password for more than one account.

Passwords should be changed periodically, depending on the confidentiality of what that password is protecting.

Whenever possible, activate multifactor authentication for any passwords that you use.
If you need to record your passwords, keep that list secure! Consider using a “Password Vault”. This is a software system that will maintain your list of passwords electronically and that list is secured by one Master Password that you create to access ALL of your other passwords.