How To Secure Your Internet Connection

Your home’s internet connection can serve as a gateway for thieves to get into your personal data and information. Attackers are always looking for susceptible home networks where they could potentially get valuable information. Although you might believe that there’s nothing ‘valuable’ stored in your computer, it is a risk you don’t want to take. 

An unsecured wireless network allows everyone within the range to access and use your internet connection. Their internet activities using your connection might slow down the speed for you and could possibly use up your data limits leaving you not being able to get online for the remainder of the month.

These are just the common threats posed by an unsecured network and I’m sure there are more harm that people with ill intentions could do to your network and use it against you. So here are tips on how you can protect your network from unwanted users:

• If you haven’t already, set up a firewall. Your internet service provider will be able to help you with this. A firewall is important to monitor all the information and data that is being sent and received by your computer. You will be able to check for suspicious activities that you didn’t initiate.
• Back up your firewall software with a physical firewall. A firewall software can be breached by people with the right resources so double your protection and install another firewall.
• When using a router, make sure it also has a firewall of its own.
• Secure your wireless network with a strong and secure password is made up of a lot of characters with uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters. The more random, the better.
• You can also setup your wireless network to grant access only to devices it recognizes.
• Encrypt all sensitive data and always back up important files. You will never know what will happen tomorrow. A hacker could have gained access to your network and deleted all your files or your internet got infected with a virus or your hard drive broke down. All these scenarios could happen to you at any given time so always remember to back up. Data recovery is expensive and takes up to a few months.
• Make sure all the accounts in your computer have secure passwords. Turn off other accounts in your computer when not in use.
• Turn wireless broadcast off when no one else is using the network besides you.
• Turn computer off when not in use. Sometimes we just leave the computer on when we’re not using it to save time from booting up or if we want to be always notified of incoming emails and news. However, this will leave your computer vulnerable. The best way to protect it is by turning it off.

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