Working from Home? Wi-Fi Security and Tips and Tricks

Working from Home? Wi-Fi Security and Tips and Tricks

Now that nearly all Rapid7 employees—along with a huge percentage of U.S.-based knowledge workers—are sliding into a work-from-home (WFH) routine, I jotted down some Wi-Fi security and management tips for my friends and colleagues who might not have paid much attention to their home networking. Hopefully, you find one or two of these points useful in your own new WFH Wi-Fi life.


Please note that these tips are only useful in cases where you own and operate your own wireless access point (in other words, you went out of your way to buy a router that's separate from your ISP-provided hardware). If your ISP owns and controls your access point (for example, it's part of your DOCSIS modem that connects to the WAN-side cable that runs out to your local drop), only some of these tips apply to you. For example, with Google Fiber's gear, you can rename your SSIDs, but you can't really check or update your own firmware. I'm sure it's fine, though. Probably. If you are concerned though, you can always contact your ISP and ask them about this.


Change your administrative password


Usually, the default password on Wi-Fi routers is something easy, like "admin." Change that to something decent. A longer passphrase with spaces and punctuation is a good start, but really, you shouldn't be picking your own passwords at all anymore. This will prevent people who associate to your access point (AP) from changing settings or modifying firmware to something evil. Also, usually these attackers are close by, since it's rare these days for administrative interfaces to be exposed to the internet.


Have you forgotten your administrative password? That's no prob ..

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