Cybersecurity at home

In this increas­ing­ly wire­less world, the steps house­holds should take in terms of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty have changed. Most homes now run net­works of devices linked to the inter­net, includ­ing com­put­ers, gam­ing sys­tems, TVs, tablets, and smart­phones that access wire­less net­works. Hav­ing the right tools in place will instill con­fi­dence that your fam­i­ly mem­bers can use the inter­net safe­ly and secure­ly for per­son­al and work-relat­ed endeav­ors.

Here are three steps house­holds can take to bet­ter pro­tect them­selves against cyber­at­tacks:

Secure your wire­less router: Using a wire­less router is a con­ve­nient way to allow mul­ti­ple devices to con­nect to the inter­net in your home. How­ev­er, unless your router is secure, you risk the pos­si­bil­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als access­ing infor­ma­tion on your com­put­er, and worse, using your net­work to com­mit cyber­crimes. A sim­ple way to secure this piece of hard­ware is by chang­ing the name and default pass­word of your router to words or phras­es that aren’t eas­i­ly guessed.

Install fire­walls and secu­ri­ty soft­ware on all devices: Fire­walls help keep hack­ers from using your device and access­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion. They guard and watch for attempts to access your sys­tem while block­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions with sources you don’t per­mit. Make sure all devices that are con­nect­ed to the wire­less net­work also have secu­ri­ty soft­ware sys­tems installed and are updat­ed.

Back up all house­hold data: While steps can be tak­en to avoid your net­work, devices, and accounts being hacked or com­pro­mised, they can nev­er be 100% effec­tive. Users can pro­tect their valu­able work, pho­tos and oth­er dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion by mak­ing elec­tron­ic copies of impor­tant files and stor­ing them safe­ly. This can be done using cloud soft­ware in addi­tion to man­u­al stor­ing devices like USBs.