Ever since I have been writing posts about securing home wireless routers, I have been asked many questions about such security. Many of the questions were the same, such as what happens if you forget your router’s password, while others have been about how best to secure a wireless router.
Since I have received quite a few questions over the years, I decided to gather the questions in a post and then add my answers to those questions. Of course, if you have additional questions you can continue to send them to me, or write them in the comments section of this post.
Wireless Network Security Questions
- What do I need to do to secure my wireless router?
- There are several settings you need to change in your wireless router to secure you network. The most important factor is to ensure you set your security to WPA2 with a strong passphrase – at least 15 characters. If you router only supports WEP, I highly recommend you upgrade your router. In addition, you should set a strong password for the admin account – and rename the account if possible – to secure any access to the router’s administrative dashboard.
- Are there any other security features that I should enable?
- I would disable remote management to restrict how you can access the router’s dashboard. Also if you router allows you to disable WiFi Protected Setup (WPS), I highly recommend you do so. WPS was designed to make it easier to connect a device to your secure wireless network, but unfortunately, since the service was built for usability instead of security, WPS opens a security hole in your network.
- Does disabling SSID broadcast provide security?
- In two words: not really. Many people think that by not broadcasting the SSID of your wireless network, it helps to keep your wireless network secure – security through obscurity. Hackers use tools that can see both broadcasted and non-broadcasted SSIDs, so by not broadcasting the SSID it doesn’t really add any security to your wireless network.
- Does using MAC addresses add more security to my wireless network?
- This questions is always debatable. Restricting access to your wireless network does make hackers perform additional steps to gain access to your network, but you must keep in mind that many hackers can spoof a MAC address. It is up to you on whether you wish to add MAC filtering on your wireless network. For me, I don’t filter MAC addresses because I have many devices connected to my wireless network that managing the MAC addresses would be too much work for very little security benefit.
- Can I recover the password to my wireless router?
- This is probably one of the most popular questions I receive. In order to secure your wireless network you need to log into the router’s administrative dashboard, which requires a username and password. Many times the owner of the router may have someone else configure the router, and then eventually the password to the router is forgotten. If you have forgotten, or don’t know the password, to log into your router you will need to perform a reset of the router. On the back of the router there is usually a reset button that you will need to press for a specified number of seconds. This button resets the router’s settings back to factory default – meaning the router is no longer secure – that will then allow you to use the default username and password to log into the router and secure your network.