Many small businesses nowadays, especially with employees 10 or less, have wireless routers and use the wireless feature to connect laptops, mobile devices, etc. for easy network sharing and Internet connectivity. Wireless is a great feature to have for any business, however, the security to protect the data transfer on the wireless connection is not always set up properly. When small businesses purchase these wireless routers, they accept the default settings for encrypting the wireless data which, in most cases, is not very secure, or even turn the wireless encryption off for much easier connectivity. This is downright dangerous and steps need to be taken to secure your wireless connection properly.
Why Not Securing Your Wireless Connection Properly Is Dangerous
Let’s paint a scenario: You are the owner of a small CPA firm that purchased a wireless router and you completely disabled the wireless encryption to let your employees in the office connect to your network effortlessly using their laptops. One day, someone is waiting at the bus stop that is across the street from your office and pulls out their laptop to browse the Internet in order to kill time waiting for the bus. On his laptop, he finds out that your CPA firm’s wireless encryption is not secured indicating to him that he can connect to your network easily to browse the Internet. He connects to your network, browses the Internet using your cable or DSL router, and decides to download movies and games which slow your Internet connection down to a crawl. Not only that, he discovers other computers connected to the network and since most of them have ‘File and Print Sharing’ on and possibly have sharing file folders without password protection, he connects to them and accesses the shared folder with sensitive client files that are also not password protected. He then copies the sensitive client files such as tax returns, payroll information, etc. on his laptop. Unencrypted passwords of accounts are also discovered and stolen by using packet sniffing software installed on his laptop. He later gets on the bus with a copy of your sensitive client files, and possibly company data files (including passwords) on his computer without ever knowing your CPA firm had been compromised.
As you can see, this scenario would be a nightmare for you as a small business owner whose job is to secure and protect company and client data at all times. If your client discovers that it has been the victim of identity theft and can trace the leak of their sensitive information back to your company, you will be liable in court. Not only that, if for whatever reason you get audited by local, state, and federal agencies and the auditor shows you have violated SOX, HIPAA, or even Consumer Privacy laws, you could face heavy fines or even penalties. This could be a major setback for a small business that could impact their reputation in the local community, regionally, or nationally depending on the target market.
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