3 New Wireless Security Solutions that Don’t Require Passwords

Is your wireless router an older model? If it is, then you owe it to yourself to upgrade the latest model. Depending on your Internet connection, upgrading your wireless router may be the easiest way to increase your bandwidth. Next-gen routers also come with new easy-to-use security features that don't require passwords, making an upgrade worth the effort.

Finding a Better Solution than Passwords
You're familiar with the most common way to connect a device to a wireless network: entering your password. Due to the prevalence of passwords, hackers have developed sophisticated methods and technologies to crack the handful of characters standing between them and your sensitive information. In fact, using high performance Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and brute force attack methods, a hacker can target a password-protected network access point and try 8.2 billion password combinations--per second.

1. Tap-to-Connect
Since WiFi passwords are becoming less secure, technology developers are coming up with better ways for your wireless device to connect to your files, like tap-to-connect for WiFi routers. Using a mobile device's WiFi Protected Setup, a user can now access a wireless network by pushing a button on their wireless router. Upon pressing the button, the signal from the router will locate the mobile device, authenticate it, and you'll be good to go. Unless a hacker can break into your building and push the button on your wireless router, they won't be able to get in.

Tap-to-connect also makes connecting to a wireless router more convenient. For example, no longer do you have to ask someone for the WiFi password and then waste the next several minutes deciphering a person's cryptic handwriting. With tap-to-connect, all you have to do is walk up to the router, push a button and you're in. Easy cheesy, lemon squeezy.

2. Connecting with NFC
If pushing a button to connect your device to a WiFi network is too strenuous of a task for you, then you can connect with NFC (Near Field Communication). A wireless router equipped with NFC technology will detect that your device is nearby and automatically log it onto the WiFi network. ZDNet explains how this works, "Through the new NFC-enabled method, the router's configuration is wirelessly handed to the device and will be connected via WPA2 security, either through a traditional wireless network or an ad-hoc direct network."

3. LiFi: The Future of Wireless Networking
Successfully tested and currently in development is a way to broadcast Internet via light. LiFi is able to broadcast digital information over a light spectrum at 10 gigabytes per second, which is 250 times faster than the average broadband connection. This may be the most secure way to use a wireless network. Unlike WiFi, which uses radio waves that can pierce through solid walls and be accessed by anyone in the near vicinity, wireless signals from light are limited to the room it's illuminating. With LiFi, a hacker would have to be in the same room as the LiFi bulb to access your wireless network, which means that you would definitely be able to see them and catch them in the act.

A typical company network has several different access points, like WiFi, among other network-connected devices. Each access point comes with its own set of security challenges. Too often a business will spend all of their security resources safeguarding their Internet connection at the cost of neglecting other access points like WiFi. To make sure that all of the network access points in your organization are secure, call Directive at 607.433.2200.