Topic 3

• Wireless modes of connection include:

  • Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth
• Encryption is used to secure data across network connections
• Wi-Fi is used in laptops, some desktops, tablets, smartphones, and many IoT devices like smart speakers and smart lights
• Bluetooth is a wireless method of connecting devices over a short distance using radio waves at 2.4 GHz
• Pairing Bluetooth devices creates a persistent link between them, requiring a passkey for security
• Wireless transmission commonly uses radio waves and is susceptible to interference from objects and nearby electronic devices
• Wireless NICs are built into devices like PCs, smartphones, and wireless speakers to connect to wireless networks
• A wireless Access Point (AP) allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi
• 802.11 standards include 2.4GHz (802.11b/g/n) and 5GHz (802.11a/n/ac) frequencies with different advantages and disadvantages
• Encryption encodes data to prevent it from being easily understood, with techniques like private key (Symmetric encryption) and public key (Asymmetric encryption)
• The Caesar shift cipher is a basic encryption method where each letter is replaced by a letter n positions further in the alphabet
• Symmetric encryption uses the same key to encrypt and decrypt a message, while public key (Asymmetric) encryption uses two keys for encoding and decoding
• Wireless encryption standards like WEP and WPA/WPA2 are used to secure wireless networks, with WEP being outdated and less secure
• Encryption can be considered 'strong' when the useful lifetime of the encrypted data is longer than the time taken to break the code