The security of your router is essential to enjoy a good Internet connection, and the reason is very simple, this device is the one that acts as a connecting link between your PC, your smartphone or your console and the servers of that game you are enjoying, that web page you are viewing, or that movie you are streaming.
If the router fails, everything fails. It doesn’t matter if you have a very powerful computer or a state-of-the-art device, you won’t be able to connect to the Internet, and that is, for many digital natives, almost like “going back to the Stone Age”. In case you don’t take care of the security of your router, you can end up exposed to attacks or intrusions that disable it partially or totally, and that consume all the bandwidth of your connection without the slightest consideration.
Let’s be honest, none of us like that our Internet connection malfunctions, much less have intruders enjoying a service that we are paying for. The experience can be frustrating And I tell you this because, as those of you who read us regularly will remember, it is a problem that I experienced a few years ago in my own flesh. For that reason, I like to share with you tips to improve the security of the router, and this time I am going to focus on three that are Very simple, but also very effective.
1.-Improve the security of your router by changing your Wi-Fi password
The main entrance door to our router is the Wi-Fi network. This type of connection has a considerable range, and this can make that a neighbor or even a person who is in the streetnear our home, you can try to sneak into our network if it appears as available.
When do these types of attacks occur? Three different situations usually occur:
- Launch a brute force attack entering random passwordsor the most used by most users.
- Let him try to associate the network name with something that might help him figure out the password. It is more common than it seems, because many users customize their network name and give personal informationsomething we should avoid.
- To be a known person and that he can play with what he knows about us to try to sneak into our network with less effort.
If our password is not strong enough, in the end we will have an intruder in our network, or even more than one, and the security your router will have fallen. To avoid this, it is recommended to change the default password that comes with the router and use a more secure one, which includes at least 16 characters combining letters, numbers, upper and lower case letters and special symbols.
we can change it entering the interface of our router (enter “http://192.168.0.1/ or http://192.168.1.1/” in the browser bar), via the “WLAN” section. Remember that you will have a password for the 2.4 GHz band and another for the 5 GHz band.
2.-Improve the security of your router by deactivating the SSID
We have already told you about the SSID in the previous section, although with the peculiarity that we have referred to it as the network name. When you have the public SSID, the name of your Wi-Fi network(s) appears to anyone to use your device to perform a search for nearby networks. This means that you will only have to enter the password to connect, and you are good to go.
Hiding the network name (SSID) allows us to add a layer of security to our router because Wi-Fi networks will no longer be shown directly when performing a search. This means that, for someone to sneak into our Wi-Fi network, you must know both the password and the network name. If we use a password following the guidelines that we have given you previously and hide the network name, it is very unlikely that we will find intruders on our Wi-Fi.
To hide the network name we just have to enter the interface of our router following the steps that we have given you previously. We go to the section dedicated to WLAN, and once there we deactivate the corresponding option, which can be indicated in different ways, but is easy to identify because it is associated with the broadcast or not of the SSID. We can reverse it at any time.
3.-Improve the security of your router with a guest network
Let’s be honest, giving the password of our Wi-Fi network is not a good idea. If we have guests at home with some frequency, or if we have a small business and offer free Wi-Fi to our clients, give them the password can end up compromising security of our router, and of our Internet connection.
I know many cases of both individuals and professionals who have had problems with this issue. It can be solved by changing the password daily, but if the connection we use is the same for everything, that is, for our home and business and for our friends, family or clients, in the end it will be a pain to have to reconnect all the devices day to day for those password changes.
Creating a network for guests is, in this case, the ideal solution, since we will be able to share our Wi-Fi connection in a limited and secure way, with an accessory network that will work independently and that will have your own network name, and your own password. To create a guest network you just have to re-enter your router interface and find the corresponding section (usually it will be in the section dedicated to Wi-Fi).
