Are your customers asking for it? Are you providing it? Are you nervous about it? Has it cost you service calls etc?
Any thoughts on network security would be appreciated for a story I'm doing in CE Pro.
-julie

No, customers usually don't ask for it.
I like the commercial on TV where they have people saying "I want a virus to infect my computer" "I want someone to steal all my information" "I want a worm to make my hardrive sound like a yack", ect...
This applies to most every customer I see (including small businesses). I always ask if they've seen the commercial, they usually say yes and laugh, I say "You know that's you, right". They usually stop smiling at this point. Somehow people just don't understand that there not magically protected automatically by something... I don't know. It's usually not hard to sell them on security.

Now to the question, I'm not an IT person and don't really want to be - I do sell network equipment and hardware once in awhile (I'm indifferent on the sale because I'm not making any money on the equipment anyway) but I don't do anything software related (I leave that up to the customer). If they need something more than simple or see they need some serious help with their computer(s) then I refer them to someone that handles that.
If I had an IT guy on staff, then this all would be a different story. And with the way things are these days, I think it's becoming mandatory to have someone very computer savy on staff. But as a very small business, I just can't do that right now (and I don't have the time or money to become one myself).

Julie, My company is teamed up with the largest privately owned security firms in our area. We have been doing security integration into our Crestron systems for years now and it is one of our strongest and easiest add-ons. We explain to the client that our design is to monitor and control a keypad in the system, and that we do not phsicly tie into the system or control the systems itself. We explain that our design is built around "stand alone" systems, and if for some reason the two systems stop communicating to each other that they will still function as they where intended in a stand alone fashion. We have virtually no services calls or call backs on the integration. Occasionally the system senses a "trouble" with our automation module when we are performing uploads, and upgrades - but we prep the client and the monitoring company to put the system in test while we do this.

Its does not cost allot in hardware to integrate this system - we sell them on the fact of eliminating "ALARM" keypads, and replacing them with multi-functional Touch Screens that will do it all. This helps us up sell more touch screen, and more money for our programming and engineering department.

I'm assuming you are mainly talking about wireless security? If so, then I have had a couple of customers ask me to set up wireless security, but not for any reason other than they don't want someone freeloading off their internet connection. I've only had one customer worried about 'wardrivers', most are unaware of the security issues wireless networking can present.

Then again, most of my customers do nothing on a PC except the odd email, and they live in gated communities that won't allow outsider access without a visitor pass - so they don't really care.

Minimum a router/firewall. Even customers who are retro jobs I still "evaluate" their computer and network setup and at least make sure they have a firewall. If not I have always tried to explain but once those commercials started showing from AOL I too started using those as the example. Even in gated communities or anywhere else nothing is safe. Everyone with a broadband connection should have a firewall with NAT and blocking of ping requests. This way they look like a dead IP. With wireless, I always turn on MAC filtering, WPA, etc. and use a 16 character password for them generated randomly from the many password generators on the internet. I also use a different 16 character password for the router admin. Always turn off SSID broadcasting and change the router name to something odd instead of the default. Once you explain to customers about how keyloggers work and how anyone in the WORLD can access their computer otherwise they seem to get the picture, even if it makes it a bit more difficult to add a new laptop or handheld to the wireless network.

Thanks Atoh and the others--
Do you charge for providing this service? And what do you use?

I charge my normal hourly rate, added in as part of the labor on the job (change order if a retro job). Computer stores in my area charge pretty much the same amount for their hourly labor. Occasionally, dependent on the size of the job :-) , I just do it as a "good will" type of thing as long as it's only an hour or less to do. By the time you've spent that much time in a customer's house you get a good idea of how their electronics of all types are set up. I usually use Linksys routers or sometimes if the customer has an old pc around I use Smoothwall firewall, a free Linux based firewall.

I usually set up security as part of the network install, so I'm just charging my normal rates.

Typically I'm installing Linksys routers and Windows XP machines - and I consider the combination of the router firewall, and the XP service pack 2 firewall to be adequate for the basic needs of my customers. Ocassionally I add a third-party firewall, but very rarely.