Tip of the Week: Basic Wi-Fi Security Essentials

Wi-Fi is a crucial component within most workplaces, primarily due to its convenience. However, it is just as crucial that these workplaces aren’t sacrificing their security for the sake of this convenience. That’s why we wanted to share a few tips to help you keep your use of Wi-Fi as secure as possible.

Don’t Trust Your Security to Your Wi-Fi

Or, in other words, make sure you’re still employing cybersecurity best practices. Wi-Fi has a reputation for being insecure without any support, so you should always reinforce it with additional solutions and processes that help to reinforce your security. For instance, encrypting your traffic will hide its contents from peering eyes… something Wi-Fi won’t do on its own.

Of course, this also includes the best practices we recommend for any browsing you do, like avoiding sites that don’t have ‘https’ in the URL. Compounding your security will usually make it stronger.

Be Smart About Access Credentials

Hopefully, you know by now what to avoid with your passwords:

• Simple and common words and phrases
• Static character types
• Password reuse and recycling
• Written notes and other reminders

Of course, it does make sense why users will cheat when creating their passwords, especially considering that projections estimate that the average number of passwords a user will have this year is 207. Taking this into account, it really is no surprise that shortcuts are so common.

This doesn’t make shortcuts okay, though, so you will need to find a middle ground that helps your employees keep their sanity while your business remains secure. One effective option is to use passphrases rather than the more conventional password, either coming up with a completely random sequence of words (like despondentcharmtroupe, for instance) or a very bland sentence that isn’t well-known but is memorable enough to you (like shewokeupontime). These can be made even more secure by adding in or swapping out numbers, symbols, and capitalization.

To help you keep track of all of them, we recommend the use of a password manager, protected by (what else?) a master password or passphrase.

Better Secure Your Wi-Fi

Above, we discussed how Wi-Fi isn’t particularly secure on its own. In addition to the other methods we discussed here, you should make some changes to your Wi-Fi to improve its inherent security somewhat, including:

• Changing the SSID to something other than the factory default that doesn’t identify who it belongs to, regardless of whether your network is hidden or not.
• If you have a device that can use Wi-Fi, but you aren’t actively using it, keep it turned off to reduce how many access points there are to your wireless network. For the same reason, try to use wired connections any time you can.
• Maintain a dedicated guest network to isolate guest usage from your business use. Make sure you protect this network with a periodically updated passphrase, and deactivate the network when it is not needed.

SCW is here to assist you with your cybersecurity concerns. Subscribe to our blog for more tips and best practices regarding your IT and reach out to us directly for added assistance by calling (509) 534-1530.