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Question

Can I use a wireless adapter in a medical office?

May 12, 2016 8:20PM PDT

Ok, I have a question. I work for a doctors office as a medical assistant. Our creditcard machine went down today because the phone number we had for the machine was canceled. So I hooked it up via Ethernet cord from the computer at the front to the internet. It now works fine. I told the owner to just buy a wireless netgear USB for the front desk. She got it and then I get a text later tonight saying that her husband said the computer needed to be wired directly to the computer to stay secure. I'm confused. Does it actually need to be a wired connection to stay secured. Can't anyone just access our computers through the router itself if they really wanted something? I worked for 6 hours getting this all setup and just need the USB. I just need to know if I can use a USB Netgear and still stay secured and still have our database secrued. At my old doctors office we used USP netgears and tablets. So I need to know

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I wired connection is more
May 13, 2016 5:52AM PDT

secure then a wireless. Just the nature of Wireless allowing multiple connnection and a wired requires 1 wire for each connection. Wireless has password protection and Wired has a physical protection.

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Answer
The answer is yes to the question in title.
May 13, 2016 11:09AM PDT

But then you add more to this question later.

No. WiFi is not secure enough today. Even WPA2 AES TKIP can be broken in under 24 hours so wired remains the best security today. That said, if you give them access to the Ethernet ports in the facility, we are again insecure.

There's plenty on the web about cracking WEP, WPA, and WPA2 so I don't duplicate that in discussions.

-> But when money is involved, stay wired.