How to protect your wireless network from Wi-Fi Sense

[Batu69]

If the recent controversy over Windows 10's Wi-Fi Sense feature has you concerned about wireless security, good. In this post, I explain why wireless security is as much social as it is technological, and suggest four ways to make your wireless network safer.

When social networking collides with wireless networking, it makes a lot of noise.

That's what Microsoft is discovering this week, as critics take aim at a controversial new Windows 10 feature called Wi-Fi Sense. (For an explanation of what the feature does and how it works, see this earlier post.)

The level of alarmism I'm hearing over this feature is truly, well, alarming. I completely understand the concerns over this feature, because its basic design seems counterintuitive. But I've looked at it very carefully and I see it as a solid, net improvement to wireless networking.

Yes, the availability of Wi-Fi Sense should make everyone think about wireless security. But the funny thing about the barrage of coverage of this feature is that it's finally forcing people to think about the tradeoffs we make every day between convenience and security--especiallywhen connecting to wireless networks.

Microsoft isn't the first company trying to expand wireless coverage worldwide by making it possible for its customers to turn personal wireless routers into more readily accessible hotspots.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been pushing for years for a much more sweeping plan, called the Open Wireless Movement, which is intended "to build technologies that will let users open their wireless networks without compromising their security or sacrificing bandwidth." Mozilla is one of its partners.

Comcast has had its variation on this theme, a feature called the "Neighborhood Hotspot initiative," for more than two years. In Australia, Telstra has something similar, with the theme "share a little, get a lot."

Crowdsourcing Wi-Fi isn't insecure if it's done right. The problems are the same as with websites that require authentication. Shared passwords make phishing and social engineering possible in both places.

There are plenty of easy things you can and should do to ensure that your business and personal wireless networks are secure from outside attackers. Oddly enough, if you adopt these best practices, you effectively eliminate any of the perceived risks from Wi-Fi Sense as well.

I have that full list later in this article, but to understand the "why" behind the "what to do," you need to look at how Wi-Fi Sense fits into the bigger wireless networking picture.

Why does the Wi-Fi Sense feature exist?