Wi-Fi has become as ubiquitous as air and, for those who are trying to conserve their data, is often the go-to choice for connecting to the internet.

But connecting to networks in public spaces, such as airports, coffee shops and hotels is notorious for being a terrific way to get hacked, have your data compromised or worse, your identity stolen. But even when a Wi-Fi router is password protected, it is not invulnerable to attacks either.

Taking a step forward in this regard is the newly launched WPA 3 standard, which is apparently more difficult to hack into. The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that the new standard has now been finalised, and thus, moving forward, will be incorporated into Wi-Fi routers across the board, as well as offering enterprises another way to better secure their networks.

The protocol will apparently make it more difficult for hackers to run brute force attacks against password protected routers, in which a program runs millions of possible passwords and tries them against a network. However, WPA 3 does not mean anyone should still use ‘123456’ or ‘password’ as their Wi-Fi password.    

As for the protocol upgrade, it’s about time. WPA 2, which WPA 3 replaces, was released back in 2004, fourteen years ago.