One of the most important things we can all do for ourselves these days is to ensure we are protecting our home internet connection. You might not spend much time thinking about your home network at present, but there is no doubt that it’s a good idea to do so, so this is something that you should start thinking about if possible. As it happens, there are a number of extremely effective ways in which you can hope to protect your home network.
In this article, we will take a look at just some of the most effective of these. As long as you are doing all or at least most of the following, you should find that your home internet connection is a lot more protected in general.
Carry Out An Assessment
First things first, you need to take a moment to carry out a vulnerability assessment. This is something that you can do for the network as a whole as well as individual components, and doing so is certainly going to make for a much safer network on the whole. That’s because such an assessment will throw up all sorts of ideas around what you might need to improve in order to make the network safer and more secure. You should have this done professionally to ensure the effects and results are as strong as possible.
Update Your Router’s Firmware
If you have never done this before, it is one of the first steps you should take to help secure your home network. Your router has a firmware package, which is essentially software that helps to keep hardware safe. You need to make sure that this is updated as necessary, otherwise, your router is not as protected as it could be in an ideal world. Many routers automatically update their firmware, but unfortunately, not all do, so you should make sure to do so manually as well just in case.
Change The Admin Login
Your router will also come with a default administrative login code, which you use to change various settings for the router and connection itself. If someone can get into this, they can cause havoc with your connection and your network, so it’s important to make sure that you are changing this admin information as soon as you can. Be sure to choose a strong password and username, so that nobody is likely to be able to crack it easily. This is just another level of protection that might prove very important.
Set A Strong Wi-Fi Password
So many people do not have strong wi-fi passwords, which is a real problem. Without a strong password, it’s not too hard for someone to hack into your connection. That might not seem like a huge problem, but consider that they might then use your connection to do something illegal, and you can understand why you would want to avoid this. The solution is simple: set a strong password, one that includes lots of letters, numbers, and special characters and doesn’t contain anything obvious like ‘password’. While any password can be guessed, this will make it a lot harder.
Activate Your Router’s Additional Security Features
Did you know that your router has additional security features? Most people do not, so if not you are not alone by any means. If you want to ensure that your router and network are fully protected, you might want to think about turning these features on as soon as possible. Modern routers come with many such features, and they are all worth considering at the very least. You might find some are more important than other ones, but they are all likely to help in some way or another, so take a look at them and try them out for yourself.
Use Antiviral Software
As always, it is clearly important to make sure that you are using some kind of antivirus software. This is going to help protect your systems and network as a whole from malicious attacks, which are more common than you might think. Make sure you treat yourself to the best antivirus software you can afford – it really does make a difference and you will find that you are going to feel a lot more protected if you have this in place. After you buy it, make sure that you set it up correctly, with as many of the additional features turned on as you feel is necessary.
If you have done all that, you are going to find your home network is a lot more protected.