If you work in an office where employees travel often or where you host a lot of visitors, you’ll want to set up a wireless network so that itinerant workers can stay productive. Business travelers at this point are old pros at sniffing out and tapping into wireless hotspots – but that doesn’t mean you can’t make things a little easier and safer for them.
First, set up your hotspot in an accessible area. If you’ve got your router sitting in a concrete-walled storage closet at the end of the building (not likely, but as an example), it won’t be of much use to guests all the way on the other side of the building.
Make sure your router sits well within range of where mobile workers and guests tend to work – near your guest or floating cubicles, if you have them. Your wireless network should also be accessible from your conference room so that people giving presentations or participating in meetings can get on the Internet if they need to.
Everybody knows that wireless networks can be major security failure points, so take some measures to protect yourself. Encrypt your network, rename it, and give it a strong password. To this day it’s shocking how many office buildings you can go into and immediately sniff out a half-dozen unsecured networks named “LINKSYS.”
Make sure your network has WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption, give your network a name that’s unique but doesn’t clearly identify your company as the owner (lest this attract the attention of anyone looking to hack into your network specifically), and then give your network a long password with both letters and numbers.
