Info Advantage Blog

Your wireless router is critical to your business’ online infrastructure and provides your team with precious wireless Internet connections throughout the office. You need to ensure that the signal can reach your entire office. Here are some tips to help you figure out where to put your router, and to ensure that its signal is as strong as possible throughout your office.

Put Your Router Out in the Open
Some people don’t like the appearance of routers. They fashion them an eyesore and try to hide them away in cabinets or elsewhere, away from where people can see them. This is often both counterproductive and dangerous, as the device can potentially overheat in a place with poor air circulation. If you store your router in a cabinet, you’re also weakening the signal, which can make it spotty and difficult to use.

Instead, we recommend that you keep your router out in the open, where it can get plenty of air and keep the signal as strong as possible. This is a best practice for your technology, including workstations and servers that generate a lot of heat naturally by functioning properly.

Use a Central Location
While it might be tempting to just put your router in a far corner of your office and forget that it exists, chances are that the other half of your office won’t be receiving a very strong wireless signal. To avoid this, you need to set your router up in a central location where it can broadcast its signal to the entire office. Depending on your office’s setup, you might even need multiple access points to allow each of your employees to access the Internet.

Also of note, you should elevate your router slightly to ensure that the signal isn’t being blocked by furniture that sits on the floor. File cabinets, desks, and other objects, could all get in the way of the wireless signal.

Review Your Bandwidth and Internet Service Agreement
Sometimes the placement of a router won’t have anything to do with your problem, and the issue is with your network connection instead. In this case, the problem would be with your modem or your Internet service agreement limiting your bandwidth and the flow of data. If you’re having wireless problems, and you’re sure it’s not your router, it’s worth looking into the problem on the ISP’s side of things.

Upgrade Your Router
Are you using the same old router that you picked up when you first started your business? If so, there’s a strong chance that your router’s hardware or firmware is outdated. Since you actually have control over your router, you’d do well to investigate the issue before you purchase a new one. It’s recommended that you go with a router that’s capable of supporting both 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz bands. This will help you keep your network strong and healthy. Plus, sometimes all it takes to resolve connectivity issues is to upgrade your system’s firmware.

For help optimizing your business’s wireless network, reach out to Info Advantage at (585) 254-8710.

Experts are warning Wi-Fi users of a newly discovered vulnerability with the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol that can be used against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. This includes information such as credit card numbers, passwords, emails, photos, chat messages, and more. In addition, a hacker may be able to use the vulnerability to inject ransomware, malware, or other attack methods by injecting and manipulating the data. These are known as key reinstallation attacks, or KRACKs.

The weakness can expose any product that uses the Wi-Fi standard protocols, meaning that the vulnerability isn’t only found in a specific product or implementation. During a study by KU Leuven, researchers found that the vulnerability has already affected products from Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and more.

According to ArsTechnica, "it works by exploiting a four-way handshake that's used to establish a key for encrypting traffic. During the third step, the key can be resent multiple times. When it's resent in certain ways, a cryptographic nonce can be reused in a way that completely undermines the encryption."

For more information on KRACK attacks, visit https://www.krackattacks.com/ or you can read the in-depth academic paper here: https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/ccs2017.pdf. You can also contact us at Info Advantage at (585) 257-8710 to learn more about the vulnerabilities that can be threatening your data, and how to protect your business from cybercriminals.

Wireless Internet signals, referred to most commonly as Wi-Fi, are commonplace in every office. Even organizations that don’t often need access to the Internet, like restaurants and coffee shops, have wireless connections available for customers to use. However, just because you can connect to free Wi-Fi, doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.

One of the big problems with free Wi-Fi is that people who use public connections are fully aware of just how dangerous it is; yet, they still want to use it. The Identity Theft Resource Center claims that 78.5 percent of users who connect to free Wi-Fi understand that there are major risks involved, and yet only 26.7 percent use a VPN to keep themselves safe. Thus, free Wi-Fi should be approached with caution. Here are just a few reasons why you need to be careful when accessing public Wi-Fi.

Anyone Can Access It
If the Wi-Fi isn’t protected by a passcode, the network is vulnerable to hacking attacks and other threats. Plus, if the router isn’t configured properly, the passcode doesn’t offer much help. The fact that anyone can access it at their leisure means that there’s virtually nothing stopping hackers from connecting to the router and spying on other users.

It’s worth mentioning that, although we use the term ‘hacker,’ even a mischievous child with a bit of curiosity and the proper know-how could access your files via public Wi-Fi if the connection isn’t secure.

Free Wi-Fi is Highly Used
It’s natural that a free Internet connection will attract attention from people. That said, the more people who connect to a Wi-Fi network, the slower the connection, and the more likely it is to house a hacker. Hackers understand that free Wi-Fi draws plenty of victims, so they’ll use the convenience to find new targets.

Data Isn’t Encrypted
Encryption adds an extra layer of protection to any data that’s sent to and received across an Internet connection. When routers have encryption, hackers have a more difficult time stealing data. Therefore, you should only connect to routers that have encryption, and it’s unlikely that your run-of-the-mill router at your local restaurant has it.

What You Can Do
You may not be able to control who secures their public Wi-Fi routers, but you can take steps to protect yourself if you’re ever in the position where you feel you must use it. Here are three best practices for keeping your devices safe while using a public Wi-Fi network:

• Only connect to networks that require security codes.
• Set your phones and devices so that they don’t automatically connect to any new Wi-Fi network.
• Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

To learn more about how you can keep your data safe from prying eyes, reach out to Info Advantage at (585) 254-8710.