How to Secure Your Router
A router is an important part of your home’s internet network. It is used to connect your devices to each other. It can also be used by a hacker to gain access to your network. This is why it is important that you secure your router. One of the steps to take to secure your router is to change your router’s SSID. The SSID is the public name that shows up when you’re looking at available Wi-Fi networks around you. The default SSIDs that many routers come with can be used to identify their model or brand. The default SSIDs that come with many of these router models also reveal user information.
To change the SSID, open a web browser, type in the router’s IP address (or sometimes a URL), and enter the admin username and password to access the administration panel of your router. Unless you’re doing this over a wireless connection, this is fine. These login credentials are sent over the air when logging into the admin panel via a wireless connection, making it possible for them to be intercepted. If you log in wirelessly, a rogue device on your network that is monitoring traffic could see your password because your connection to the router’s management page is not encrypted.
Another way to secure your router is to change the admin login credentials. Every router comes with a default username and password. The default username and password are used to log in when performing the initial setup of the router. It is very easy for a hacker to find information on default usernames and passwords for routers. In fact, there are websites such as RouterPasswords.com which are designed for this purpose. As a result, if an attacker knows what kind of router you have and you haven’t changed the admin credentials, they can easily break in. They can often brute-force an attack by going through all known admin username/password combinations, even if they don’t know what kind of router you have. This is why changing the default password and username is important.
