More and more, we are seeing firewalls employed in home networks as an effective way to beef up security.

Check to make sure that your wireless router has firewall capabilities, or better yet, add a firewall device in-line

for better security. Looking to tighten the wrench one more turn for increased home network security? Then,

your firewall should offer proxy-technology for true application layer security a step above standard packet

filtering.

 

4. Employ strong passwords

As processors get faster, passwords need to get longer and utilize more of the standard character set in order to

have greater resistance to hacker programs. Today s strong passwords are at least 13 characters, they use upper

case, lower case, numbers and symbols; they use nonsense words, and have no direct connection to the user.

One example of a strong password would be When U W1sh upon a St@r

 

5. Web controls

Today s hackers aren t just adolescent pranksters anymore. Hackers include organized crime and its big

business. Their tactics are sophisticated and they make special efforts to get victims to go to web sites that look

real but are fake. Once there, they get you to enter personal information so that they can either steal from you

directly or under your name. In addition, you may land on a legitimate web site that has been hacked and installs

malware on your computer in a drive-by download. Almost immediately, the malware disables your client-

based AV software, and then it converts your computer into a botnet using your processing power and

information to fuel criminal activity. For all these reasons, it just makes sense to limit where you and family

members visit on the Internet.

 

There are known bad blacklisted sites, regions of the world and IP addresses, and you can set up your firewall

to not allow communication from these places. In addition, some UTM appliances offer URL filtering services

that allow you to limit the scope of Internet activities by categories. This is particularly helpful when there are

impressionable young minds in the house. Any way that you are able to limit Internet activity to known good

areas, will help you to achieve a secure home network.

 

6. Inactivate automatically connect to non-preferred networks.

Another way that criminals can gain access to privileged information, and then use it to hack into your wireless

network, is by setting up a rogue access point. They place an access point in range of your home and then try to

get you to log on to the rogue AP. Usually, if they can reduce the signal of your wireless router enough, and you

have automatically connect to non-preferred networks activated, then you will likely connect to the rogue

without even knowing it. Therefore, to reduce threats from rogue access points, you need to inactivate this

setting.

 

7. Filter MAC addresses ON

Another option you have is to set up your wireless router to only allow known computers to connect to the

network. It is still possible to spoof a MAC address, but again, it s one of those things that makes it just that

much harder for someone to hack into your wireless network. You get enough of these annoyances, and you are

just too much trouble for the average hacker.

 

 

 

 

 

WatchGuard Technologies

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www.watchguard.com