As we all know, your WiFi network’s signal doesn’t end at your walls. That’s why the need for WiFi security was born. Anyone can access your WiFi signal if it is near your home or office.
Wi-Fi security stops unauthorized users from using your network and accessing any of your data.
If your WiFi network is not secure, there are lots of attacks that can be made on you. Some of them are the following:
- Evil Twin Attack: An evil twin attack is a type of spoofing attack that gets people to connect to a fake Wi-Fi access point by making it look like a reliable network. Hackers can view all of a user’s network traffic once the user is connected to the “evil twin” network.
- Wireless Sniffing: As we all know, in the nature of wireless networks the data communication is through the air. As a result, it makes it easy to get captured by intruders unless we make it a secured communication. A wireless sniffing attack is the stealing or acquisition of data by capturing network traffic between the hosts.
- ARP Spoofing (ARP Poisoning): is a kind of Man-in-the-Middle(MitM) attack that enables attackers to eavesdrop on network devices’ communication. Using ARP Spoofing, hackers can implement lots of attacks like: Denial of Service(DoS), Session Hijacking,…
- And lots of other attacks.
These are 6 easy ways to secure your WiFi
1. Make your WiFi password Strong and Memorable
A strong password should contain words that a hacker can not easily figure out.
A strong password must
- contain at least 12 characters.
- be a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, and special symbols.
- be random and not easy to guess.
Note: Do not write your password on some other paper or note.
2. Restrict access to only authorized users or devices
Only allow authorized users or devices to access your Wi-Fi by configuring each device’s mac. By using Media Access Control (MAC) address filtering, you can restrict which devices may use your Wi-Fi and which devices may not use your Wi-Fi.
Media Access Control (MAC) address filtering is done on your wireless router’s WiFi settings (on 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.0.1). On most routers, you can find Media Access Control (MAC) address filtering on the wireless tab.
3. Unpublicized your Service Set Identifier (SSID)
A service set identifier (SSID) is your network name or WiFi name. Every wireless router or access point has their own SSID, so nearby devices can find and connect easily by choosing which network they want to join. SSIDs can be as long as 32 characters, although there are no minimum character limitations.
So if we make our SSID private anyone cannot know if our network exists or not, so we will be able to avoid unauthorized access.
SSID privatization is making it invisible to users or devices nearby. By turning off SSID broadcast, the router no longer broadcasts the name of the wireless network. (see your router’s manual on how to turn off SSID broadcast).
4. Turn on Firewall
Unauthorized access to a network from the internet is prevented via firewalls. Firewalls filter the incoming and outgoing traffic on a private network in order to block malicious traffic like viruses and hackers.
Most modern wireless routers include a built-in firewall to protect your network from malicious traffic, but some of them are turned off by default. So Turning on your firewall network security is vital for securing your WiFi network.
If your router doesn’t has a firewall like this, make sure you install an updated firewall solution on your devices that access the network.
see your router manufacturer manual on how to turn on Router’s firewall (on most routers you’ll get firewall settings in “Advanced Settings” tab > “Firewall”)
5. Enable Network Encryption
Network Encryption is technique of encrypting or encoding messages that are transmitted or communicated via a wireless network, even if an eavesdropper gets the message while in transit, messages are unreadable while in transit between two or more network nodes.
Getting encryption enabled on your wireless router will secure the data communication and prevent Man-in-the-Middle(MitM) attacks.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and Wi-Fi Protected Access Version 2 (WPA2) are the three different types of Wi-Fi encryption protocols.
You can turn on Network Encryption in your wireless router’s WiFi settings (on 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.0.1)
6. Update your Router’s Firmware
The preloaded software on a router is called firmware. Each manufacturer of routers has a unique version of this software.
Router’s Firmware is similar to the operating systems that operate on your smartphone or personal computer, it manages all of the device’s internal operations.
Updating your router’s firmware might include additional security features on the router. Firmware also includes bug fixes, security and technological advancements that improve your Wi-Fi security, speed, coverage ,…
So it’s better to update your router’s firmware when a new version is available.