Secure Your Home’s Wi-Fi Router

Nowadays we might spend more times at home and using our home wireless network. It is important to make sure our home wireless network is secure and no one except our family would have access to it. In this post, I would like to share some tips on protecting your Wi-Fi network.

Get start with Your Wi-Fi Administrator Center: You might have setup your Wi-Fi once and you just keep connecting to it. However, it is good idea to connect to it and check it out. Normally, you have to open browser and type and address or IP to visit your Wi-Fi login menu and then you have to enter username and password. In case, you don’t know what are address and login credential, you may just search for model of your router and look for manual or login instruction.

Get Familiar with Security Features: Some routers would have additional security features like Guest Wi-Fi, Parental Control, Anti-DoS, MAC filtering…. Read your router’s manual and configure all security features. For example, in case you have Guest Wi-Fi, if someone visiting your home and want to use your Wi-Fi, you don’t need to share your actual Wi-Fi password and instead create temporary guest account and let them use it. You may enable MAC address filtering (don’t confuse with MacOS) where you add MAC addresses for your devices and only let them to connect to Wi-Fi router and block other devices.

Regularly Check who has been Connected: Sometimes, bad guys or bad neighbors might attempt to hack into your Wi-Fi and use it or even crack your password. All Wi-Fi routers have a place where showing who are connected (normally by their MAC Address) and you could compare these MAC addresses with your connected devices and if you have seen any unfamiliar MAC address, then take screenshot and change your Wi-Fi password and use screenshot to report it to local cyber-police in your country or take any legal action against intruder.

Use strong Password and Encryption Technology: To make sure hackers won’t use your Wi-Fi, use strong password with combination of character, number, symbols and it should be long and use strong encryption protocol. You may refer to your router’s manual for instruction on doing that.

Disable Admin Access from Wi-Fi: In some cases, you may access administrator center for Wi-Fi, then one you are using with IP to login using Wi-Fi too. Make sure disable the access using Wi-Fi and only enforce access using LAN connection.

Place Your Router in Right Location: You have to place your Wi-Fi Router in location where everyone in your home would have access to it but access to outside is limited. For example, you may place it in middle of your home where everyone would have access to it but it has limit access to outside home.

Take Over Your Hacked Router: Sometimes, bad guys might take over your router and even change passwords where you could not login or access your settings. In this case, because you have physical access to your router, you could find reset key on it and press it and it will reset router to default and change password to default one.

Enjoy your secure Wi-Fi connection.