WPA3 is the latest security protocol designed to safeguard your Wi-Fi traffic. Here’s what you need to know, as well as our top picks for routers that support WPA3.
Is your Wi-Fi network secure? Not if it isn’t using the WPA3 protocol. The latest generation of Wi-Fi security offers a host of features to keep your data safe—both at home and on public networks. Announced back in 2018, WPA3 support has been mandated for all routers carrying the Wi-Fi Certified label since July 2020. It’s a big step forward for wireless security, especially for laptop and smartphone users. Have you updated yet? Here’s everything you need to know.What Is WPA?
WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) is a series of security protocols designed to safeguard your Wi-Fi traffic. When you connect to a Wi-Fi network and type in a password, WPA governs the « handshake » between your device and the router, and the encryption that protects your data. If you haven’t updated your router in a few years, your home network likely uses WPA2, the previous version of this protocol. WPA2 dates back to 2004, and while it greatly improved upon its predecessors—WEP and WPA— WPA3 steps it up even more.What’s New in WPA3?
WPA3 comes in multiple connection types to meet the usage and security needs of different people. These include WPA3-Personal for personal home networks, WPA3-Enterprise (and an optional 192-bit mode) for enterprise businesses, and Wi-Fi Enhanced Open for public Wi-Fi connections. It enhances Wi-Fi in the following ways:
Passwords are much harder to crack. With WPA2, an attacker can capture some data from your Wi-Fi stream, take it home, and run it through a dictionary-based attack to try and guess your password. WPA3 requires attackers to interact with your Wi-Fi for every password guess, making it much harder to crack. This is especially useful if you’re using a weak password on your network (though you really shouldn’t).
Your old data is safer. Even if an attacker does figure out your password, they won’t be able to do as much with it as they could before. WPA3 supports « forward secrecy », which means that if an attacker captures any encrypted data from your machine, and then later learns your password, they won’t be able to decrypt that old data.
