WiFi Security Options

Like all technologies, WiFi has gone through a number of revisions. Whether you’re planning on using WiFi for a home network, wide area network (WAN), local network, or public network, there are certain security protocols in place to protect your mobile devices from being infiltrated over your wireless connection.

There are a wide variety of WiFi security options, of varying effectiveness and practicality. We will touch on the most common and practical here. In general, we recommend always having the highest degree of security possible, as it greatly reduces the ease at which your data can be accessed. This is especially important for public WiFi, such as you might find in coffee shops and airports. If you connect to a public WiFi source often, make sure you do not perform any high-risk tasks unless you see the network has the best network possible.

WEP –

Short for Wired Equivalent Privacy, this was the first version of consumer WiFi security, developed in 1999. It is far outclassed and currently abandoned. Most modern mobile devices (including Androids and iPhones) will not even allow someone to connect to a WEP network, so if you find yourself using one of these, it’s likely time to upgrade to a newer network. This is important, as not only has it been abandoned, but it is very vulnerable to security breaches.

WPA –

Short for WiFi Protected Access, this was created quickly to circumvent the frequent hacking of WEP security systems that was frequent in the early 2000s. It didn’t take long for hackers to break this code, and, just like WEP, WPA has been long abandoned by current devices.

WPA2 –

This is the oldest WiFi security you’re likely to still commonly find. The 802.11i wireless security standard based internet protocol was introduced in 2004. The most important improvement of WPA2 over WPA was the usage of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES is approved by the U.S. government for encrypting the information classified as top secret, so it must be good enough to protect home networks. Unfortunately, the possibility of attacks via the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) is still high. This is the issue with WPA too. Even though breaking into a WPA/WPA2 secured network through this hole will take anywhere around 2 to 14 hours, it is still a real security issue. However, for most people, this is probably not

WPA3 –

This is the current form of WiFi security, and the one we highly recommend. All devices manufactured since 2019 are mandated to be compatible with WPA3, so you’ll gradually be seeing a lot more of this.