Tips to secure your wireless network

Tips for securing your wireless network

If you have a wireless router, here are a few things you should do immediately after plugging it in:

1) Change the default username and/or password to access the web-based control panel
2) Disable WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup; where you can connect to the network by pressing a button on the router)
3) Make sure you're using WPA2-Personal (for home use) or WPA2-Enterprise (for business use). DO NOT USE WEP!!!
4) Don't use dictionary words or personal information in your key (password); instead, try using a combination of letters (upper- and lower-case), numbers, and special characters, where allowed, and make the key at least 10-12 characters long (at least 16 would be preferential)
5) If you're like me (paranoid), turn off SSID broadcasting, so the average user can't even see your network name when searching for wireless networks. A more skilled user could still find it, but they would probably not search, opting to go for the lower-hanging fruit instead.
6) If you're scarily like me (crazy paranoid), you can even enable and configure MAC filtering, which will only allow certain devices to connect to your wireless network. Of course, that same skilled user could spoof a MAC address and gain access to your network, but when a MAC address can have 281,474,976,710,656 possible combinations, how likely is it that (s)he'll sit around long enough to get a hit?