How To Secure Your Netgear Router In 5 Easy Steps?

Secure Your Netgear Router In 5 Easy Steps -

Is there any straight forward method to secure your Netgear router? This guide gives you a few simple steps for securing your Netgear Wifi router. Though the things became lately important but securing the wifi networks has been more than crucial. Several risks like bot networks, wifi theft, and stolen banking information are common types of cybercrime.

Most of the organizations are not just targeting big businesses and governments, but they are also trying to access, control, and steal information from your personal home network. So, how to secure your Netgear router in such scenarios?

Note: When your neighbors are stealing your wifi connection information, the concern is of least worries.

Different methods to secure your Netgear router

1. Configure the Netgear Router Settings

Unlike most of the routers, the settings on your Netgear router are pretty simple. Usually, the firewall is set up, the guest network is disabled and remote administration is disabled. There are few other settings that can be configured but for now, we are keeping the settings to default. Let's check them out.

• Firstly, log into your network.
• Launch any installed web browser on your system and enter 192.168.1.1 (if that doesn’t work try 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.2.1). But if that too doesn’t work then the default IP address might have changed. In such a case, you have to hard reset your router by pressing and holding the small button present at the backside of the router.
• If your router is new then you will have to access the control panel by going to www.routerlogin.com
• Type or enter the username and password. The default username is admin and password is admin.

2. Check for Suspicious Activity

Alternatively, you have an option to check if anyone is currently leeching off your bandwidth. For this, you have a couple of tools that will help you to analyze and secure your Netgear router.

Go to the “Attached Devices” section of your router admin page. Here, you can see who is connected to your network or not.

It might be difficult to identify which hardware is connected to the wireless home network. Still, you can use an online tool that will list most of the manufacturers associated with the wireless device.

3. Preventing Home Routers from Being Hacked

Sometimes, you think that a hacker is trying to break the algorithm of your computer's infrastructure. While in reality, a kid is sitting in front of his computer who is entering the default IP address and password to computers within the wireless range. The default password is set to admin.

Remember that you must change this password in order to secure your Netgear router. Generally, you don't want anyone to access your router login panel. So, it is recommended to modify the default IP address as well. Do ensure that you pen down the new IP address and router password for future reference. If in case, you forget it again, you can completely reset your router that will cost you a lot of time.

4. Setup Encryption Standard

When it comes to network security, you must have heard about various encryption standards. If you want to read an encrypted file, you can access it through a password or secret key that allows you to decipher it. The encryption standard is represented in bits. Usually, a 64bit encryption key is easier to hack than a 256bit key.

While other encryption standards like WEP are 64 or 128bit are much easier to hack. However, WPA is a major upgrade over WEP but it still has its own vulnerabilities. This is because it is backward compatible with WEP that subsequently uncovers possibilities to security holes. In recent times, WPA2 is the most advanced encryption standard for home networks. Though it is not perfect it takes much effort to crack than WEP. Specifically, you can set it to WPA2 to secure your Netgear router.

5. Future Hacking

Hackers are engaged in a constant job of cracking and stealing your valuable information. Fortunately, companies like Netgear are patching their and fixing security breaches for their products. If in case, you are not keeping your router firmware updated, you are leaving yourself open to attacks.

Check for “Firmware Update” under the Maintenance tab on a regular basis. This setting can be set to “Auto” if you don’t want to hassle with manual configurations all the time. Ensure that no one has changed the defaults and created security holes in your device. Also, note the following things:

• Check if any leaching scum is stealing your network bandwidth.
• Close the easiest hacker target
• Setup the best encryption standard for your router network.

This way you can protect yourself against future attacks and secure your Netgear router.