Do you have a good handle on the state and security of your home WiFi? You may not realize it, or maybe you do, but a lot of risk exposure exists via your home WiFi network. With an inadequate security set-up of your WiFi, you expose yourself to a slew of potential issues in the near and long-term. Securing your home WiFi network starts with the adding, updating, as well as changing or rotating of WiFi passwords regularly.
Adding WiFi Passwords to the Network
There are far too many home networks that are wide open. Anyone who is within distance to the home WiFi network can connect to it, get online, and access everything that the network can tap into. At the surface, this may seem harmless. After all, people are just getting on the internet, right? There is, unfortunately, a lot more to it than that.
When you are thinking about a home WiFi network, think of it as a gateway into everything connected within your home. This could be your computer housing sensitive information, your home security systems, cameras, appliances, and more. With someone connected to your WiFi network, the power of what they can do it with it is endless.
Start by adding WiFi passwords to your network. If you have not changed the WiFi password assigned by your internet service provider, locate this by looking into the manual of the device. There will be an admin username and password that will let you in to add that initial, unique password.
Changing a Password
Changing a WiFi password is just as easy. When it comes time to change that password, you want to start by doing this via a connected Ethernet cable. Doing this over WiFi can prove unreliable. Open up the browser of your choice and go to the IP address of the router. In most cases, this will be 192.168..0. If this does not work, check out the manual of your router to locate that unique address.
Upon finding the right IP address, you then need to move forward to the point where you are putting in the administrative credentials, the admin username, and your password. Again, you want to change this from the default setting on your router, so that no one else can get into change or disable the password themselves.
Once you log into the administrative user interface of the router, through your browser, it is then where you can change the password of your WiFi network.
Go Unique and Rotate Often
You need to be unique when choosing your WiFi passwords. Going with something like “Password123” is not going to cut it as a hacker or intruder can break-in. You want to go with a unique password that meets certain credentials such as:
- A minimum of eight to 10 characters
- Inclusive of both uppercase and lowercase letters
- Inclusive of a special character such as a “!” or “%”
- Inclusive of at least one number or a sequence of numbers
Rotating your WiFi passwords at least every few months makes the most sense. You do not realize how many people you give the password out to and once they have it on their device, they can also easily share out that WiFi network with others without even realizing the risk or security exposure