So, you have set up your wireless connection at home and are now ready to zoom through cyberworld using your high speed internet. But did you secure your connection? It is important to secure your connection to ensure that nobody uses your internet network without your permission. Some unscrupulous person may also use your connection for uploading or downloading illegal material and such activities can land you in major trouble. However, securing internet connection is a simple and easy task. You can use various techniques for this and we will discuss these techniques in detail.
- Encrypting Access Point: You can secure your connection by encrypting you Access Point. Currently there are two options available in the form of WEP and WPA. WEP has been proved to be an ineffective technique and is easily crackable. WPA2, although not completely secure, is the more popular form of encryption. However, you need to ensure that all your Wi-Fi devices sharing the network are compatible with the encryption setting used by you.
- Set up MAC Address Security: No, this MAC security is different from your Macintosh computer. MAC address is a unique physical identifier address allocated to each Wi-Fi device. This address is logged by your router when you use a particular device for connecting to the network. You can feed such MAC address to your router which may then restrict the network access to only the devices with authorized MAC address. However, this technique is not very secure as hackers can easily camouflage their MAC address to gain the access.
- Password Protection: Your router forms the core point of your home network and you can secure this core point by using password. However, you need to be very careful choosing an appropriate password. A randomly generated password is considered to be more secure. You should avoid using obvious choices such as your name and birthday. It is also advisable to use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters. You can use offline or online random combination generators for coming up with a password which is not easily crackable.
- Tweak ‘Service Set Identifier’ or SSID: In order to secure your home network, you might want to disable broadcasting your SSID or network name. In Wi-Fi networking, the network name is broadcast by router to enable roaming. However, this function is almost unnecessary in home networks. You can disable such broadcast and thus may secure your internet connection. But if you are not willing to let go of this feature then you should change the default SSID to something unique. This would not turn your network safe, but may decrease the likelihood of your connection getting hacked.
All these methods will make it more difficult for outsiders to hack your network. You may choose any method or combination of various methods to meet your requirement. If you are using password protection, then remember to change it frequently. Happy and secure internet surfing.
