On my average daily dog-walk 50% of the homes I walk past have un-secured wireless, so in order to help you not be one of these statistics I’ve shared the two very simple steps below to help make your network more secure.

First, log onto your wireless router, most home routers will be on the default IP address of http://192.168.0.1 with username ‘admin’ and password ‘admin’ or ‘password’ unless you have changed it. If you have a managed router from O2, BT, Talk-Talk, Sky, etc then this will be written on the bottom of the wireless router or your ISP would have sent you a letter / email with these details.

2 very simple and easy steps to secure your wireless:
1. Encrypt it – Best to use WPA or WPA2 Encryption – but something is better than nothing!
2. Hide your SSID – this broadcasts your wireless identity, so if its hidden its less likely to be found.

2 very simple ways to keep your computer safe:
1. Turn on automatic updates – the updates include security updates and a fully up-to-date computer is less vulnerable to malicious exploitation.
2. Keep your Anti-Virus definitions up-to-date.

A few hints and tips for the more advanced:
These get more advance as we go on – nothing stopping most people implementing the first one or two.
1. Change the router default password – most are set to “password” or “admin”
2. Introduce MAC address control to authorise wireless clients
3. Change your wireless channel to one not being used by all of your neighbours – most wireless routers have a built-in site-survey tool – changing the channel will stop any interference.
4. Run multiple SSID’s if supported for your own / guest networks (also consider VLANs)
5. Change your network range and IP scope – everyone uses the default 192.168.0.0/16 subnet – consider 172.16.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/16 – advance users only.

MY FINAL TIP:
If you are worried about your wireless network and would like it more secure – then pay a local, trusted computer professional to do it for you – an hour of their time will be well worth the investment.

With that in mind, I just thought I would share a little about SaaS and some elementary forms of it out there which we may or may-not use today.

What is SaaS?

The simple bit – Software as a Service is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand.

The bit more in-depth bit – SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires. The on-demand function may be handled internally to share licenses within a firm or by a third-party application service provider (ASP) sharing licenses between firms.

Basically - You don’t own the software or application, you don’t maintain it, service it, patch it, back it up, and you don’t tend to install it or use it locally to your network or machine – you just rent the rights to use it, usually via a web-browser or a small client installed on your machine – easy!

The positives of SaaS:

Cost - no huge up-front server and application infrastructure costs, instead a low monthly subscription.
Time - deployment is a lot quicker when you don’t have to build and test a system.
Maintenance – the SaaS provider does this for you!
Support - again, the SaaS provider does this for you!
Backup & Restore – usually, again, the SaaS provider does this for you!
Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity – included - SaaS providers host these applications in multiple secure data-centres all over the world – so you can be assured of near 100% uptime and as long as you have internet, you can access your data or application.

…and much, much more such as centralisation, typically more software and application features, lower cost of ownership…

The drawbacks of SaaS:

Internet - Since SaaS utilises the internet, you must ensure that yours is robust and stable, and consider multiple SLA-bound internet circuits (such as Leased Lines or Ethernet Circuits with some auto-failover (ISDN / ADSL / 3G as an example).

Have I been using SaaS without realising?

Probably certainly yes! If you work in an office, your email may be provided to you (for example hosted Exchange), perhaps your financial and ERP system (SAP), or even your CRM system could be on-line (such as Salesforce.com).

On a domestic & home-user level, if you use GoogleDocs – a popular system for storing your files “in the cloud” – this file store system could be classed as SaaS, and I’m sure it won’t be too long until a few of us will adopt the Microsoft Online packages instead of downloading software to our home machines.

SaaS is a great way for products, services and applications to follow YOU, the user, rather than the traditional method of being dedicated to devices which may never be fully utilised. The idea is to give you trouble-free, zero maintenance access wherever you are, and I’m sure it won’t be long (5-10 years) until we all end up paying for our IT service on a cost-per-use basis, both work and home, just like we buy our electric and gas.

Darren