Top Tips on Securing Your Home Network
As our digital lives continue to expand, a high performance, robust and secure network is a necessity. With this in mind, we’ve put together a few tips on securing your home network. These are based on our decades of experience as well as following the guidelines established by Homeland Security.
Consumer grade equipment just doesn’t cut it.
Virtually all off-the-shelf equipment, including routers from your ISP, have default usernames and passwords that are publicly known. Furthermore, many have backdoor access for ease of support. This makes them easy targets for hackers. Additionally, their firewalls are really nothing more than security by obscurity. What is needed here is a real firewall that is constantly inspecting traffic both in and out, actively blocking threats and is locked down.
Limit your Wi-Fi footprint to the confines of your home.
Another reason to avoid consumer grade routers and, yes, including those from your internet provider, is that they have a signal pattern that, if you could see it, would look large donut. In many cases, this signal extends well beyond the boundaries of your home. A good example is seeing your neighbors Wi-Fi pop up from time to time. This extended signal allows eavesdropping by potential intruders. Therefore, it’s important to consider antenna placement and antenna type. The solution is multiple directional access points strategically placed throughout your home providing excellent coverage and maximum security.
Keep friends and family out of your personal network.
When family and friends come over, many want access to your Wi-Fi. The first issue is you just gave them the keys to the kingdom. Secondly, if their device has been infected the virus will do what a virus does best-spread. Here the solution is to create a separate guest network that allows internet access only in and out of your personal network. Additionally, you can set the guest network keys to expire, cutting off access.
This level of security has become very affordable. One of the side benefits of updating to a more robust and secure network is a substantial increase in performance. In many cases, we see 2-4x improvement. Also, please note that this is by no means a comprehensive list. Many other aspects come into play when securing a network.
We’re here to help.
For a limited time, we are offering our in home Network Security Assessment for only $99.
We’ll review all aspects of your network documenting areas of potential weakness and provide recommendations for improvements. To schedule your assessment contact us or call at 630-242-4600.
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