4 Critical Steps To Protect Your Local Area Network From Hackers |
Posted: May 26, 2017 |
4 Critical Steps To Protect Your Local Area Network From HackersA local area network, often abbreviated as LAN, is simply any computer network that connects multiple or all computers within a space such as an office, school, or a home. As you can imagine, any LAN can be vulnerable to hackers, and if you have personal or financial information stored on yours at home or at your business you need to protect it all costs. Here are four critical steps to protect your local area network from hackers: 1. Make Your Password Stronger The first step is also the simplest: just make your password stronger. If your password is currently your name, birthday, or anything else that’s easy to guess, then hackers are going to have no trouble breaking in. While your password should absolutely be something you can remember, it also needs to be something that will be hard for hackers to figure out. To this end, it should include capital letters, numbers, and symbols/special characters. 2. Scan Your Network Each Week Make it a rule to use a LAN scanner to scan your network a minimum of once a week. Your scanner will prove to be invaluable to you by pointing out any irregularities or malfunctions that you were unable to detect yourself. In fact, if you do have a hack, your scanner could be what first points it out to you. 3. Keep Your Antivirus Software Updated You have antivirus software for a reason, to protect your computer and network from threats, but it’s only going to do its intended purpose for you if you keep it updated. Yes, it may seem monotonous to take the time out of your day to actually update it, but it needs to be done. While you’re at it, check to see if you have any other programs or applications that are outdated and remove any that are. The best way to tell if a program is outdated is if it’s no longer receiving support from the company that produced it. 4. Encrypt Your Whole Network Your biggest line of defense against hacking is arguably going to be to encrypt your whole network. Encryption is where you convert the data of your network into a code in order to hinder unauthorized access. To encrypt your network, you’ll need to log into the administrator console of your router. After providing your administrator name and password, go to the settings page and locate the ‘security’ or ‘wireless security’ section. You should then find a wireless encryption setting, at which point you should change it to the ‘WPA2-PSK’ setting. If your router doesn’t have WPA2, then it’s a clear indicator your router is outdated and you’ll need to purchase one that does. At that point, all that’s left for you to do is to save your settings and reboot the router to allow them to go into effect. Protecting Your Network By following each of the four steps you have learned about in this article, you will be able to minimize the risk of your home or office local area network being hacked.
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