Securing Your Wireless Network
The vast majority of businesses in the tourism sector now use the internet as an integral part of their business operations.
Across the hospitality sector bookings are regularly taken online, private and financial details are processed and customers are able to use complimentary internet access.
While the use and provision of wireless broadband access provides numerous benefits to tourism businesses it also bestows new responsibilities on the owners and managers of these businesses. This means that there is a requirement for degree of diligence to ensure that your systems are as secure as possible. All data that is processed must be safe from potential hackers and business owners should take steps to ensure that customers are not using their connections to download illegal and/or copyright protected material.
Simple Precautions
Taking these precautions is now more important than ever. Wireless connections are so easy to purchase and install that it is becoming rare for businesses in the hospitality sector not to offer customers a connection. In turn customers increasingly expect to be able to access the internet when they are taking holidays.
Wireless connections bring their own problems as it can be easier for hackers to access internet connections via a wireless network than a conventional network. In addition to this the legislation that governs this area has been tightened up with the introduction of the Digital Economy Act 2010 which places a greater burden of responsibility on the providers of internet services.
Businesses that use or provide wireless internet connections should take sensible, basic precautions to secure their networks as the penalties for negligence can be severe.
The first precaution that should take is to ensure that your network is protected by a ‘strong’ password. For a password to be ‘strong’ it should:
- Not be a word that can easily be guessed i.e. the name of a child, spouse, parent, pet, your business, etc;
- Consist of both capital and lower case letters; numbers and symbols (e.g. £@*~ etc);
- Be at least eight digits long – the longer the password the harder it is to break; and
- Be changed on a very regular basis – we recommend once a month at the very least; once or twice a week is ideal.
You should separate your private business network from the network that you provide to your guests by purchasing and using a wireless router with VLAN (virtual local area network) capabilities. These can be purchased from any reliable computer accessories firm.
Attempt to log all activity undertaken by guests. As a minimum log all requests by customers to use your network during their visit. In addition you could also log all data traffic and activity on your network in order to be able to identify any illegal activity. This will give you some evidence, should you ever need it, that another party was responsible for any wrong doing.
Get your guests to read and sign a short set of terms and conditions in which they will agree not to download material from other websites.
Restrict access to ‘peer to peer’ or file sharing websites. Again this may require some technical ability but help should be available from most software providers.
Further Information
