5 Ways to Protect Your Home Wi-Fi

In today’s digital world, with the amount of data we have online and on our devices it has become very important to protect it from praying eyes. An attacker compromising your computer is like someone kicking in the front door of your house and barging in. And if your network is compromised it is equivalent to giving the key to the front door to the intruder.

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You normally use your home wireless network to access your online data. If not configured properly that same Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) gives that freedom to the attacker. So let’s take a look at five ways that help you better protect your home Wi-Fi.

Avoid Default Passwords

Leaving the default password of the admin account while setting up your router is a bad idea.  Attackers are usually aware of the default passwords of popular manufacturers. If not, they can be easily found online. If guest account is enabled change its default settings too. Come up with a strong password. It is very important to develop a complex password that is easy to remember for you and hard to guess for others. A good practice is to use lower and uppercase letters, numbers and special characters and use a passphrase instead of a password. Stay away from birthdays, anniversaries, names and the likes, as they can be easily guessed.

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Change the Default SSID Name

Service Set Identifier (SSID) is the public name of your wireless network. Many times companies use the same SSID’s for all their products. It’s not a direct security threat but if an attacker identifies a default SSID, they may be encouraged to try to attack it, under the assumption that the network may also use the default password and be insecurely configured. They may also use targeted attack using known vendor specific vulnerability. Hiding the SSIDs altogether is not very effective though. There are a number of tools available that hackers can use to discover it.

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Protect Access Points with Encryption

Encryption is a must for network and data security. The best encryption available is WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2). It is stronger than its predecessor WPA as well as WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) which was riddled with security holes. Unlike other versions, WPA2 mandates the use of AES (Advance Encryption Standard) algorithm for security. Though WPA2 is not supported by some older wireless cards and access points; try to go with the most secure option available whenever possible.

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Enable MAC Address Filtering

Media Access Control (MAC) address is a unique hardware identifier for your computer. By enabling MAC filtering, you can have more control over who can connect to your network. You can set up a list of clients that will be allowed to join your network. Once it’s enabled, the router/access point will check the MAC address of any client that sends a request to join the network against that list. Those that are not on the list are not allowed to join. Keep in mind though; this is not a one stop solution to keep attackers off your network. MAC addresses can be faked. So, be sure to take other security precautions as well.

Disable Remote Administration

Some routers allow the users to administer the router remotely from anywhere. Disable this feature unless you absolutely need it. Attackers can exploit it to gain administrative access to your router over the internet.

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By taking these few basic measures you will be able to better protect yourself from attackers attacking your network and create a few more hurdles for them to accessing your network.

What do you do to protect your wireless network? Tell us in the comments. Or tell us if I missed something or if you want to see detailed coverage on any of the above topics.