How to secure your wireless (WIFI) Home Network

A router is probably the most important device in your home or office. It monitors incoming and outgoing traffic, acting as a secondary to ensure that no unsecured data comes in and out.

It controls your home Wi-Fi network and through it all your PCs, phones, laptops, tablets, and other digital devices connected to Wi-Fi.

If anyone else has access to this network. Whether it’s a hacker or your next door neighbor. It can view or steal your sensitive data.

Therefore, it is very important to keep your router safe. In this guide, I’ve outlined some steps you can take to help secure your home Wi-Fi network. The good news is that these steps don’t take much time or are difficult, and they will significantly reduce your risk.

For these tips, you’ll need to access your router’s settings, which you can usually do by typing an IP address into your phone’s browser or, you can find it through an app on your phone.

Unfortunately, if you do not know how to find these settings, check the documentation that comes with the router, or you can find details about your router through a quick web search using your router model.

1.Open your router settings panel:

First, you need to know how to access your wireless router settings. Generally, you can do this by typing “192.168.1.1” into your web browser or your phone browser and then entering the username and password.

This varies from router to router, so check your router’s user manual first.

If you have lost the manual, you can also use Google to find the manuals online.

2.Create or change the WIFI Password of your Router:

You should use WPA2 security to protect access to your router. Which requires you to submit a password to connect to each new device.

It is enabled by default on almost every router, but if it is not enabled on your router, enable it through your router settings.

It’s a good idea to change your Wi-Fi password on a regular basis. Yes, that means you’ll need to reconnect all your devices, but it also kicks off any unpleasant visitors to your network.

You can find a list of connected users through your router settings panel. We also suggest changing the password required to access the router settings, most people just leave it as the default – this means that anyone who knows the default password can reset the router.

3.Firmware Up to Date:

Your router runs on low-level software called firmware that essentially controls everything on the router.

It sets security standards for your network, defines the rules to which devices can be connected, and so on.

Some of the latest routers update the firmware in the background, but it’s best to have the latest firmware on your router.

This process varies from router to router, but finding your router’s firmware, such as the option to update password settings, in the Router Control Panel should not be too difficult.

If you get stuck, check the router’s documentation or the official guide on the Internet.

4.Network Encryption Enabled:

To prevent other computers in the area from using your Internet connection, you need to encrypt your router’s wireless signal. There are many encryption methods available, such as WEP, WPA, and WPA2.

WEP is the most widely used and basic encryption technique.

To enable the encryption in your router go to the wireless security settings on your router configuration page, choose which security method you want to choose. I suggest, if you have older devices, choose WEP, otherwise, go with WPA2.

Then enter the passphrase to access the network; Make sure it’s hard for others to guess, and consider using special letters, numbers, and combinations of letters in the passphrase.

5.Filter the MAC addresses in your Network:

Whether you have a mobile phone or a laptop, all your wireless devices have a unique MAC address like an IP address

To add an extra layer of security, you can add MAC addresses to your router’s settings, ensuring that only devices can connect to your home Wi-Fi network that matches the MAC address.

MAC addresses are hard-coded addresses in your networking equipment, so one address allows only one device on this network.

To enable the MAC address filtering process, first make the list of all the devices you want to connect to your wireless network, then find the MAC addresses for each device (you can find the MAC address for your laptop or PC). This can be done by inserting the command “ipconfig / all” into your command prompt, or you can find the MAC addresses of mobile phones under network settings) and add them to the router filtering administration settings.

6.Reduce the range of the wireless signals:

If your router has a high signal range but you live in a small house or apartment, you can reduce the signal range by changing the router mode “802.11n” to “802.11g” or any other wireless channel.

Or if you don’t want to change the wireless channel, you can place your router inside any box, under a table, or wrap a foil around the antenna of the routers to reduce the range of wireless signals.

Bottom Line

To Conclude, encryption and MAC address filtering is probably the best way to secure your network.

Once you’ve enabled these settings in your router, you need to add new settings to your wireless devices.

So that they can connect to Wi-Fi networks. You can choose to automatically connect your computer to this network, so you will not need to enter SSID, passphrase, and other information whenever you connect to the Internet.