Internetworking Concepts 2 Log Sheet

Student Name: Lauren McGaw

Outcome No: Date: 19/03/2014 Time
Outline Task:


Securing wireless networks is a very important step in implementing a wireless network. There is no
one single solution to create a secure network, but there are multiple things you can do to increase
the security of your network.
SSID (Service Set Identifier)
The SSID should be configured not to broadcast to increase security. This was your network cant be
seen (Although it can still be sniffed out)
Stop broadcasting of ssid
Change default ssid
MAC Address Filtering
MAC address filtering can block access to your network based on a devices MAC address. MAC
address filtering uses blacklists and whitelists to determine which devices are given access to the
network and those that are not.
MAC address filtering is not fool proof as MAC addresses can be spoofed to allow access to
unauthorised addresses, this is easier to do in a wireless network than it is to do in a wired network.
Encryption Types
There are three main encryption types for wireless networks, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), WPA
(WiFi Protected Access) and WPA2 (WiFi Protected Access version 2).
WEP The original encryption protocol developed to give wiresless networks the same level of
security as their wired counterparts. However WEP has several flaws that make it an easily broken
protocol and so an unsuitable encryption to use these days (In 2004 the IEEE declared that WEP -40
and WEP -104 "have been deprecated as they fail to meet their security goals" and WPA or WPA2
are recommended.). WEP can use a 10 digit key (64 bit WEP (WEP -40)), 26 digit key (128 bit WEP
(WEP -104)) or a 58 digit key (256 bit WEP).
WPA WPA was introduced as a security enhancement over using WEP. WPA usually uses a
preshared key (PSK). WPA uses either TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) or AES (Advanced
Encryption Standard) and offers a built-in authentication support.
WPA2 WPA2 is an enhanced version of WPA which improved the security offered by its
predecessor. WPA2 does not allow the use of TKIP as it has known security holes discovered in the
original implementation of WPA. WPA2 has been mandatory WiFi certified devices since 2006.
It is highly recommended that WPA2 is used wherever possible.

Firewall
The firewall is important part of any network as it stops unwanted and unauthorised inbound traffic
to the network. Firewalls use 3 types of filtering:
Packet filtering firewalls analyse the contents of data packets to find packets of data that
you have specified that you do not want accessing your network,
Proxy
Inspection Instead of going through all of the information in a data packet, the firewall
checks key features in all outgoing requests nand check to see if those matching
characteristics are coming through in the inflow to ensure that relevant information is
coming through.
Firewalls can also block IP addresses, domain names, decide what can allow or have access to
protocols such as IP, FTP etc,blocking or disabling ports and using keywords to block unwanted data
Changing default usernames and passwords to devices such as routers
Position of WAP