As the lines between home and business computing continue to blur, even the enterprise IT administrator needs to be concerned with their employee’s security practices on their home wireless network.

The last thing you want is for a hacker to compromise your employee’s computer via an under-secured home wireless connection, and then quickly and efficiently travel down that handy remote user VPN tunnel straight into your business’ network. Educating employees on the secure use of wireless home networks can be as simple as reviewing the practices of “SAFE WIFI.”

1. SSID Broadcasting “OFF”
There is really no reason to broadcast a home wireless network SSID. Liken it to the risk taken when a sign outside a home welcomes visitors by providing the family’s first and last names. With name and address, criminals can obtain enough additional information from the internet to make the household a likely identity theft target.

2. Activate WPA2 encryption & authentication
There are three standard offerings for securing your wireless communications, which include WEP, WPA and WPA2 in order of increasing security. WPA and WPA2 offer encryption for the entire session, with WPA2 offering the strongest encryption.

3. Firewalls (and especially proxy-based firewalls) are best
More often, we are seeing firewalls deployed in line with the wireless router in home networks as an effective way to improve security. Looking to tighten the wrench one more turn for increased home network security? Then, the firewall should offer “proxy-technology” for true application layer security – a step above standard packet filtering.

4. Employ strong passwords
Today’s strong passwords are at least 13 characters, they use upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols, they use nonsense words, and have no direct connection to the user. One example of a strong password would be “When U W1sh upon a St@r!”

5. Web controls
Today’s hackers make special efforts to get victims to either divulge their personal information or recruit the computer for organized criminal activity, and this gets easier if the home wireless network has been hacked. To make this harder, configure the firewall to block known bad “blacklisted sites,” regions of the world and IP addresses. In addition, some UTM appliances offer URL filtering services that limit the scope of internet activities by categories. Reducing the portion of the internet that can be visited will help ensure a secure home network.

6. Inactivate “automatically connect to non-preferred networks.”
Criminals can gain access to privileged information, and then use it to hack into a home wireless network by setting up a rogue access point. If users have “automatically connect to non-preferred networks” activated, then they will likely connect to the rogue without knowing.

7. Filter MAC addresses “ON”
Be sure to set up the wireless router/firewall to only allow known computers to connect to the wireless network.

8. IPSEC VPN as remote connection to the office
As more employees are working from virtual or remote home offices, criminals are drawn to the home wireless hack as an attack vector into the enterprise network. Only strong security for both wireless security and remote connection will deflect these attacks. Given the choice for remote network connection between a standard VPN, SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN – the IPSEC VPN will support the strongest security.

While there is no guarantee for 100% hacker-free security, the “SAFE WIFI” practices package some of the best security that is commonly available with today’s home network products. Following ”SAFE WIFI” and staying tuned to new changes allows users to safely enjoy the convenience of wireless communication in the home now and in the future, and helps to protect the enterprise from network attacks.