Securing your Home Network
The use of computers at home has turned many novice users into computer geeks. In order to protect yourself from hackers, you need to know computer geek terms like routers, hubs, switches, Ethernet cards, firewalls and a host of other terms that you probably never thought you would know.
Part of the reason home users are more familiar with these terms is the vendors have made the devices more affordable and much easier to use. This benefits both the vendors (by seeing more sales) and the home user (by being provided with more protection). An entire family can now use wireless technology to connect to the Internet whereas they once had to run wires all over the house. Home networking is easier and cheaper than ever before!
However, home users may not appreciate the need for securing their network from hackers until it is too late. Hackers look for unprotected networks, even home networks. The hardware and software sold by vendors have good default settings, but there is more you can do to protect yourself.
Most of us want to skip over the manual and just get the hardware or software installed, but the manual can provide important user settings and configuration information you may need. If you have skipped it, you may want to dig it out and read it to learn more about securing some of the following areas:
- Router (Wired) - This is the device that sits between your broadband modem and your computer. The broadband modem connects to the router which then has a couple of ports that hook up your computers to. The first thing you should do is change the password on the router. Almost anyone who works with home based routers will know the default passwords that are set by the company. Even better this information is freely available from their company support sites.
- Router (Wireless) - Like the wired router, this to sits between your modem and your computer. Besides having some ports on the back of it for wires, this device can also accept computer connections using wireless cards. In addition to changing the admin password, you will also need to configure your wireless options so you are not sharing your connection with people that you don’t want to use it. Under your wireless router settings for security, we recommend that you set the security to use WEP - 128 bit encryption. What this means is that once your set a secure password for the wireless, a user would have to know this 26 character length key before they are able to use your internet.
Making your home network more secure just takes a little reading and a little time. But, it is much easier to learn to secure your network than it is to try to clean up a mess a hacker can make if they are allowed into your network.