As we’re living through an ongoing pandemic of Covid-19, the ones who are fortunate enough and working from home have understood one thing, that is a WIFI router has added its name to the list of essential items of food, shelter, and clothes.

It helps to connect our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even gaming consoles to the internet and connect seamlessly. We enjoy the benefits of our High-Speed Fiber Internet without heeding to the need of the hour which is security. Security and privacy have been the new age bread and butter which is associated with the internet, the WIFI router has also been enabled with features which prevent itself from malicious attacks. Let’s look into the matter in a better way below.

WIFI (Wireless fidelity) is the term used for IEEE 802.11, IEEE being an international organization and 802 is the committee for LAN/MAN. The wired internet connection is availed through optical fiber and copper wires (CAT) but the internet availed through wifi is through radio waves and is the most advanced form of internet presence in the market.

This also brings security issues with it, there is always an issue of giving up information pertaining to transactional history, private information which can be used by hackers for their malicious intent. This requires the router to have enhanced security features to fight these attacks off!

Here are 5 ways in which you can benefit yourself from an attack on your router:

1. Using the latest Encryption:

Not using any type of internet connection which use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) form of security.

WEP is an obsolete form of internet security measure, the very least which should be used by the users and provided by the ISPs are WPA 2 and WPA 3

WPA stands for WIFI Protected Access, WPA 3 is a nascent form of connection that is not adopted widely in the industry.

2. Updating Firmware:

Firmware is an operating system for the WIFI router which provides the interface of the router as well as enabling configuration of protocol and security settings. The firmware updates are rolled out on a regular basis by the manufacturer. Updating the firmware helps the router to be in totally updated format thus fencing off the attacks which can penetrate the routers which use the previous version of the firmware.

3. Using Strong passwords:

Avoid using common passwords like ‘12345’ and enabling even the most layman of people to get access to your router. Mixing numerical, symbols and letters as a password is the most common way to protect your WIFI from being accessed by unwanted people. There are types like “Brute Force Attack” which helps the attackers to decrypt and get access, to avoid these types of attacks there is software like Hydra.

4. Changing of the hardware:

Any router which stops the firmware update is prone to attacks, so to prevent such attacks from happening to change the router once every 4–5 years is highly recommended. With the change in hardware, the chances of getting better features like 5GHz internet are also available.

5. Securing physically:

Keeping the WIFI router in such a place that there is no way any unwanted person can physically access and use the WPS button to connect oneself to the network.

These are the 5 ways in which you can protect yourself from any kind of attacks on your WIFI router.

So securing your network is easy but it’s just for your security. Broadband needs to be secured by the service provider as well as from your side.

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