Home Network Security Tips
As purchasers upgrade their PCs and laptops and are discovering the convenience of wireless computing, they could also be exposing themselves to attacks from random hackers. If you've got a home network and it has wireless capabilities one of the most significant things you can do to guard yourself, your PCs and most significantly your information, is to secure your network. You might imagine you do a great thing leaving your wireless network open for your neighbours to use, but you can also be permitting folk to use your network to download bootleg music or films ( which you'll be in charge of ), send unsolicited commercial email ( aka spam ) or launch viruses. Securing your network is fairly simple and can be done by almost anyone, even if you are not PC savvy.
If you're employing a computer you may wish to connect your personal computer via ethernet wire to your router, while you are making the configuration changes. The very first thing you need to do is log into your wireless router and change the administration password and user name if feasible. Leaving the default settings is like locking your door and hiding a key under the mat. Next you would like to enable WEP ( wireless equivalent privacy ) security on your router. If your router has 128 bit encryption use it, it's safer than forty bit encryption. If you've got an older router you can only have forty bit encryption, forty bit encryption is much better than no encryption so if that is all you have use it. You'll need to go into the corresponding WEP encryption key on all your PCs that connect wirelessly. Reboot the router and confirm you can still hook up with the network wire removed.
It might be better to make all the changes at once and the reboot, but if you're making a mistake doing it step-by-step helps you find your mistakes less complicated. The following step is changing the SSID ( Service Set Identifier ). The very first thing you must do is change the name from its default setting. If your router allows you to disable the SSID broadcast you need to.
Again make the correspondent changes on each one of the PCs that connect wirelessly and reboot the router. Once the router reboots ensure you can still connect to the network. The next step is to permit access via Mac addresses. Each PC has a novel Mac address that looks like 0A-3C-2A-55-E4-A0. Get all the MAC addresses of all the PCs that connect wirelessly and limit access on the router to only those Mac addresses. Reboot the router and determine you can still connect. While these tips will not keep out classy pro hackers they are going to keep out casual snoopers. Ultimately on each computer ensure you are sharing only the folders that you need other folks to be ready to see.