Hardening your wireless network is always a good idea. It stops others from ‘leeching’ your Wi-Fi and also deters potential hackers. It’s also straightforward, doesn’t require technical knowledge and can be done in minutes. Read on for a few tips. A few years back when companies began using wireless networks to connect to the internet rather than having cables snaking all over the floor, security consultants used to make a bit of a play. They’d drive through a commercial area, flip open a laptop and see what wireless networks were available. Invariably, most of the networks they identified didn’t have any security, so they could simply log onto anyone they chose to. This still happens and is known as Wi-Fi leeching. But thankfully, most people today know that at a minimum they need a log-on password to protect their Wi-Fi network from other people using it. At the same time many of the consultants could quickly discover whether data sent over the network was encrypted and if it wasn’t, it would only required a few small steps to access this data. Today routers encrypt data transmissions automatically. But any data sent over a wireless signal is always going to be potentially vulnerable to determined hackers. But you can protect yourself from this and ‘harden’ your Wi-Fi security with a few simple tweaks. Below are a series of tips that will toughen up your wireless setting and deter most Wi-Fi leeches and potential hackers. Router management software The first thing that needs to be done is to access your router management software. If you look underneath of the router, you’ll find an address which will be something like this: http://192.168.1.1. Enter this into your browser and you’ll be presented with a website that requests your user name and password for the router. These two will be on the browser and are typically something like ‘admin’ and a password like ‘ycbte7’. Please note, the password isn’t the same one that you use to access your wireless network when setting up a new device. Once you’re into the router you’ll see information that tells you about the router such as downstream and upstream data transfer rates, IP addresses for different devices and...
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