Going from unsecured to secured

Question

Hi
We have one wired desktop and two wireless laptops. After a lot of trial and error, the laptops are able to connect wirelessly to the internet (hurrah!). However, the only way I could do it was to set it up 'unsecured'. Can you tell me how to secure everything now?
I have read on these boards to go to 192.168.1.1 for the settings. Would this be from the wired computer or the laptops - or does it matter?
Then I go to the wireless security tab and it shows "Security mode - disable". If I enable that, then set a security setting, do I have to go to the other two computers and also do the same thing - or does it do it automatically to all three?
Thanks

Answer 1

You will need to set it manually on the router and the laptops.  Connect to your router (preferably from a non-wireless connection) and set up your security there first, then go to your laptops and set it up for each of the adapters.  I had just posted some wireless security guidelines for someone else, and I will paste them below for you.
WEP can be trivially broken in under 5 minutes.  If your hardware supports WPA2 with AES use that, if not use WPA.  One thing to be aware of is that you need to use a PSK of sufficient complexity to thwart a dictionary attack against your network.  WPA/WPA2 is vulnerable to this type of attack.  You will want to use a randomly generated PSK of at least 20 charachters.  (I usually go for the maiximum allowed 63 ASCII characters or 64 Hexidecimal)  A good site to obtain such a random key if you do not have another means to generate it is www.grc.com.  Click on the Shields Up graphic and go down to the GRC Perfect Passwords Generator and click.  You will be give a choice of a 64 digit hex, and two 63 character ASCII strings, one with special characters and one without.  Copy and paste one of the strings, and this will provide you with a key that is computationally infeasable to brute force.  You will want to generate a new PSK on a periodic basis.  I can't over stress the importance of a sufficiently complex PSK.  Use something like:
biscuit
and you may find yourself hacked, but use something like:
^iG=)^xY`tl+]Bb#8$qto[F:}:a_8\5M,Qej@~.w@H/_s=jpwV^; "=-G+YI nc
and you will have a reasonably secure wireless network.
I hope this helps.
I know this may sound like a bit much, but it is worth it in the long run.