Seems like everyone these days has a wireless connection in their home and business. No one should have unsecured wireless, that is just nuts! Many out there are using WEP to secure their wireless network, which was the good old standard prior to WPA and WPA 2 coming out.
At the Fuse labs we setup two access points one secured with WEP and one secured with WPA. The WEP secured access point took approximately 3 minutes to hack and we were on the network. The WPA was a much more difficult process, and we spent about 3 hours without any success. Obviously from our test run WPA is a much better way of securing your wireless network.
Now please don’t be afraid, not just anyone can hack a WEP secured access point. We have a bunch of nerds here with a lot of time on their hands and with a tremendous amount of networking experience. Not to mention, depending on your network setup, there is most likely other security measures in place to keep people from getting to your crucial data even if they were to access your wireless.
In the past WPA had some compatibility issues with different network cards. There were also issues based on usage and hardware of a network that could have caused slow downs; however, these issues have been ironed out.
The moral of the story is that, while wireless can’t be 100 percent secure, it is always a good practice to lock your network down in the most secure method available. And when it comes to wireless, WPA 2 is the most practical and secure solution.
