Hi all,


I have been asked to appear on our local cable channel for our schools to explain some of the security considerations for home users setting up wireless APs (see my charm and good looks are good for something). I am pretty experienced with wireless so I don't need technical info, but I'm not sure what topics would be useful to my end users and what I should avoid due to complexity levels.

The driving idea behind me going on there is the powers that be believe a lot of people will be getting wireless networking devices for Christmas and they want those people to be relatively safe. (hell just for the open ones that are already out there) Remember we're not trying to stop the person that wants to get in... obviously everyone here can crack wireless, we just need "reasonable" security.

I guess I'm asking if anyone has done anything like this or if you guys have ideas on what I should cover. My ideas so far include:

Changing default IP range and making it as small as possible
creating a SSID then not broadcasting it
MAC filtering
WEP or WPA (depends on some of their wireless adapters on their laptops, and driver updates are out of the question we're talking about users that are incapable of those concepts)


My ideas that are not wireless related but will still come into play with a lot of all in one devices are:

changing the default administration port on the device connected to the internet
disabling the remote administration feature
changing the default password on the access point
only sharing folders to machines that you specify on your network
only sharing printers to machines that you specify on your network


I also plan on having a technical document up on the intranet so they can see some of what I say and some examples.

I would have thought this was an easy topic, but when you think about explaining it there are a lot of considerations because we all know that if the end user can't understand it they just won't do it. In this case it's their own systems and in their best interest so I want to make it understandable for their sakes.


Thanks in advance for the help everyone,

The_Captain