Dave in Eldersburg, MD asks:
“I love having Wi-Fi in my home and office, but worry about others accessing it. How do I protect it?”
Great question Dave! Protecting your wireless router is very important. In addition to slowing your connection, you could experience other problems if someone else uses it. If a piggyback user downloads illegal content on your connection, you could be mistakenly implicated in their offensive actions.
Here are a few tips to keep it locked down from outside access:
1. Encrypt your wireless signal with WPA2 security. WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) is recommended over WEP (Wired Equivalency Privacy) encryption since it provides better protection and is easier to use.
2. Turn off broadcasting in your router’s settings: Turning off SSID broadcast for your network makes it invisible to your neighbors (change the Cricket data settings, if necessary). It’s used primarily by businesses who want their network to be found by customers they are providing free wi-fi for.
3. Disable remote administration: In general, remote administration should always be turned off, but make sure yours is not activated
4. Utilize MAC Filtering: Users can set their wireless network to only accept connections from devices with MAC (Media Access Control) addresses that the router is set to recognize.
5. Turn off your Wi-Fi network when it will not be in use for extended periods of time
If you would like to provide your family members, employees, customers or clients with free wi-fi in your home or office, call Teltek! We can get that set up for you and protect it from unauthorized use.
Teltek is proud to offer IT services as the fourth component to our multi-systems approach as your single source technology services company. This Managed Service Provider (MSP) offering completes our longstanding goal to provide our clients with a one-call resource for all of their business technology needs. IT outsourcing, remote back up and disaster recovery, helpdesk support, computer network relocations, security products and server/desktop virtualization are just a few of the services now available.