Event

Secure your Wi-Fi network

The Maharashtra Police have joined hands with ISACA and FICCI to secure Wi-Fi networks in the state

Maharashtra Police collaborates to make Mumbai Wi-Fi secure

The increasing incidents of security breaches by antisocial elements and use of unsecured Wi-Fi connections for sending terror e-mails has made Wi-Fi security a major concern these days. Consequently, Maharashtra Police along with ISACA and FICCI have joined hands to secure Wi-Fi connections in the state.

ISACA will provide guidance and support to create awareness about the need for Wi-Fi security, providing companies an insight on various internationally recognized and adopted tools and programs, providing adequate training to the IT professionals through CISA, CISM and CGEIT certifications, and so on.

According to a recent survey on Top Business/Technology Issues by ISACA, conducted in more than 95 countries, 81% of respondents named information security management as a major concern and said that securing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was a top concern facing business and technology executives. The study also revealed that many enterprises are still not adequately prepared for disasters.

Avinash W Kadam, Immediate Past Vice President, ISACA & ITGI, said in his address, “In the present scenario when Internet security has become vulnerable and terrorists are misusing Wi-Fi connections, it is pertinent to educate our society to secure the same. The objective of this conference is to make attendees understand the international best practices of Wi-Fi security. It would help these young minds and the future of India who would lead our march to a more secure Wi-Fi Mumbai by actually helping people to secure their Wi-Fi networks and spreading the knowledge that they have learnt. ISACA is helping to lead the initiative to make corporate India Wi-Fi secure.”

R. Sivanandan- Police Commissioner – Intelligence, Maharashtra said, “With the growth of technology, we must understand that we are becoming more vulnerable to more number of attacks and hence it’s very important that we develop a culture of security in our society.

During this program Vijay Mukhi, DSL Legal made a demonstration with the help of four unsecured Wi-Fi routers and showed people how to secure them.

“In last six weeks three Wi-Fi connections were misused in Mumbai,” said Mukhi.

He added, “The hacker usually uses Network Stumbler 0.40 software to see if the Wi-Fi network is insecure and if it is not the hacker uses it and sends e-mails and hence it is very important to secure every Wi-Fi network.”

Vijay Mukhi mentioned some tips for the Wi-Fi security:

Usually people use Windows on the laptop but most of the routers run Linux hence you end up using a Web-based interface. If one is changing the router setting, it will ask the user name and password and the preset user name and password is usually ‘admin’. Hence, the user should change the password from ‘admin’ to some large passwords that would be difficult to break.

Most routers use WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) which is easily breakable as it is meant for encryption. Therefore, one should use WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key) instead of WEP as it more secure.

Change the security set identification (SSID or the router’s name). Interchanging the SSID to a different vendor’s name, for instance Linksys to Netgear and vice-versa can help as it will confuse hackers who will feel that the user is using a Netgear router and will try to break that but in reality the user would be using Linksys or vice versa.

In some routers like the Buffalo and Belkin a pin number is burned on the router and first time whenever the user connects to the router it will ask the device password (pin number).

One can also put the Ethernet access control on but it is very important that the user should think twice before doing that as no other laptop can access the network for example the user’s friends who are visiting him could not access the network. [All that is required in this case is to add the visitor’s MAC address to the filter list. – Editor]

Physical security is also important as technology as the router can be reset with just a pen.