Safeguards

The best safeguard is to become familiar with your WLAN and your
wireless router. You should take the steps above into serious consideration
and establish an encryption key at least at the 64-bit, but preferably
at the 128-bit level. However, it is important to note that some
wireless network cards only support the lower level of encryption; many
companies often charge a few more dollars to have their cards support
the 128-bit encryption scheme.
Once you have turned on encryption, you may then see that your system
supports traffic only by wireless network card MAC addresses that
you can specify. This precludes someone’s trying to break into your
WLAN from outside your building or from the parking lot that is in
range of your wireless transceiver array.
As a network administrator, there are a number of ways you can safeguard
your WLAN against intrusion by following some very simple,
commonsense steps to make certain you are not being hacked. Wireless
routers always have an activity light that shows you when traffic is
flowing across the WLAN. There are also a number of software utilities
that measure network traffic, where that traffic is going, and the
throughput of each connection (how fast a download is proceeding).
If you see an unusual amount of network traffic flowing across your
wireless network and the activity light of your wireless router is congested
with an enormous amount of traffic, then you know something is
wrong! You can trace each connection into the router and if there is a
connection that doesn’t belong then you know someone may have hacked
into your system. Commonsense types of safeguards would indicate that
a normal user wouldn’t be using the wireless connection to capacity for
any prolonged period of time. Those types of connections are established
for the purpose of drawing out information, databases, and files from
your network for corporate espionage.
Sometimes just realizing that your WLAN can penetrate the walls of
your office, building, and workgroup is enough to help you realize that it
is easily possible for someone to try and break into your system from
anywhere on your immediate perimeter. Just make certain you account
for all the network traffic; it is also a good idea to keep a log of all network
activity. If someone does try to hack into your network, there will
be a tremendous spike in activity during different periods of the day or
night. You can then use that log to isolate unusual network activity and
place safeguards on your network to keep an eye out for suspicious
activity. This type of safeguard is akin to an “intrusion detection system,”
which alerts you to fraudulent and unauthorized access attempts
into your network from any external source