12 Days to a Healthy PC is designed to help you quickly make your computer faster, more responsive and healthier. We have listed steps beginning with Day 1 in order of importance. The view them all, begin here.
Day 8
Secure Your Home Network
If you do not have your home network setup with security in mind, then every machine on your LAN can and probably will be compromised eventually. On Day 8 of our fourteen days to a healthy PC, we are going to lock down our routers.
For a secure network, you will want to make sure you have changed your default router password to something secure. You will want to enable some type of encryption. WPA is the encryption method of choice as WEP has proven to be easily cracked. Lastly, you'll want to login to the router and turn off Universal Plug and Play.
Change the router's password. Fortunately, most new model automatically prompt you to change the router's password upon initial setup. The password should be a long mix of alpha-numeric characters. We like to use a complex key combination on the keyboard that is easy to remember. The default, or a dictionary-based password can easily be cracked, allowing a hacker complete control over your router.
Enable WPA. WPA is an encryption protocol that replaced WEP a couple of years ago. If you enable WPA on your router, you will also need to enable it on all of your wireless devices. Doing so is a minor inconvenience, but you will immediately make your network more secure and reduce the chance a war-driver or casual snoop stumbling upon your open network.
Universal Plug and Play should be disabled. This is a touchy subject that is being debated as to its security risks. UPnP allows programs to automatically open ports on your router to allow network traffic. The convenience of this is that you do not have to get involved in manually opening ports in the router for every service you install on your PC. The problem is any program that wants to can punch holes in your firewall if UPnP is enabled. So if you have a virus or other malicious code on your system, then you have completely lost control of your router.
We recommend you implement the first two immediately, and when you find time, go ahead and disable Universal Plug and Play. It may take a while to do all of the port-forwarding for your existing setup, but in the end you will have complete control of your network.
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