Wireless Router Encryption and its Importance
Many homes today have internet connectivity as a basic requirement, making wireless routers and other internet-sharing devices vital in providing the infrastructure needed to avail internet services. For wireless routers, encryption allows for the communications between the router and the end-devices to remain secure and safe from unwanted intrusions by encoding the data while it is in transit between these devices. The use of encryption thereby scrambles the information and makes sure that any intruders into the wireless network can only read unintelligible data rather than obtaining sensitive information from the data stream.
Encryption Protocols: WEP and WPA
People have several options for the encryption protocols that they can use for securing data flows between their wireless routers and end-devices, of which the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) constitute the most used variants (Choudhuri). The WEP protocol is the older of these two and already has known vulnerabilities while the WPA protocol is an evolved variant meant to overcome the flaws of WEP and provide a stronger standard for wireless communications. Moreover, WPA also has further advancements such as WPA2, WPA2-ENT, and WPA2-PSK (Choudhuri).
Recommendation: WPA as the Most Effective Encryption Protocol
Given the chance to recommend an encryption protocol, I would offer up WPA as the most effective and applicable in the security space when compared to WEP. The fact that WEP has existing known vulnerabilities also makes it a less secure protocol and given that more advanced protections exist, there is no reason for anyone to recommend WEP as a safe encryption channel. However, I would recommend that a person use WPA2 as the evolved version of this protocol and unless the situation calls for it, not to elect either the PSK or ENT variants due to potential limitations for connecting to end-devices.
Works Cited
Choudhuri, Sampa. "Understanding the Difference Between Wireless Encryption Protocols." 28 March 2012. Cisco Blogs. Web. 7 April 2018. https://blogs.cisco.com/smallbusiness/understanding-the-difference-between-wireless-encryption-protocols
