There are more and more individuals opting to work from home than ever before. The advantages to this are many including avoiding the morning and evening rush hours, being able to spend time with your kids and significant other, and doing everything on your own time. Though the pitfalls are many, the one that I will be focusing on in this article is that of setting up a secure wireless network for your home based business. Right now somewhere out there, there is someone with a receiver waiting to pick up on an unsuspecting person's wireless local area network. Their hope is to garner some sensitive information that may lead to identity theft, and stolen proprietary business information.
Laptop Battery Most businesses owners are not technically inclined, though they may be power users, in general security settings is not one of the first things they want to mess around with in their day to day operations. This makes most wireless LANs a great target for information predators.
Use this as your 'gateway' to connect multiple computers, including laptops, to your wireless network.
Thinkpad Here are some general guidelines to follow in setting up your wireless network. Though it may vary from vendor to vendor, the gist is more or less the same:
While most laptops today feature integrated wireless connectivity, that is, they already have everything they need to connect to a wireless connection, some do require the use of a plug in card. standard PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) slots on your laptop (the PCMCIA slots are the little doors on the side of your laptop which are about the width of a mobile phone and around half a centimetre thick). Once the card is plugged in and set up (youa ll need to install appropriate driver software), youa ll be able to connect to a wireless network.
Microsoft 1. Setup the wireless access/router point via a wired client.
2. Always change the factory setting password to something difficult for someone to guess.
3. Enable 128-bit Wired Equivalency Privacy (WEP) encryption on both your access point and network card. From time to time change the WEP key entries. If your hardware does not support a minimal of 128 bit WEP encryption, then it may be time to replace this dinosaur. WEP is only a minimal security precaution, which is better than none at all.
4. Alter the factory default SSID on the access/router point to a convoluted difficult to guess string. Initiate your computer to connect to this configured SSID by default.
5. Setup your access point not to broadcast the SSID if available.
6. Block off anonymous internet requests and pings.
7. P2P Connections should be disabled.
8. Enable MAC filtering.
9. Enable firewall on the network router/access point with demilitarized zone function disabled. Enable client firewalls for each computer in the network.
10. Update router and access point firmware as updates become available.
11. Make sure the physical router is hidden so that a random person can't reset the settings.
12. Position the physical router near the middle of the establishment as opposed to near windows to prevent others outside from receiving the signals.
When everything is properly configured, any computer on your network should be able to use a shared network printer. You can share a printer wirelessly using a wireless print server, Fi networks. When you connect your printer to a wireless print server, any computer on your network can access the printer directly through the network.
Laptop Computers These and other settings will collectively help prevent any unwanted intrusions on your private data.
If your wireless network or Bluetooth system isn't secure and encrypted, the information on your phone or computer could be stolen.
Laptop Computer Keep you and the things that matter safer with
business/home security cameras, as well as CCTV surveillance systems guidance.
If you want to do wireless networking, your first step is to install a wireless access point. A wireless access point (WAP) gives wireless devices — such as laptops, cameras, PDAs, and printers — access to a network. The network may include other devices that are connected by Ethernet cables, or the network may consist entirely of wireless connections. Whatever type of network you need, your first step in setting up a wireless network is to buy and configure a WAP.
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Notebooks I am a publisher in various industries, from business and finance, to consumer products and electronics.
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