How Digitally Secure is your Smart Home?

Homes around the globe are increasingly getting smarter and India is no exception. The range of Smart Home automation devices and appliances with internet capabilities are on the rise in the market, with more and more appliances getting smarter. They offer homeowners the effortless convenience of monitoring and controlling their home’s inner and outer surroundings seamlessly, even when they are thousands of miles away.

The ubiquitous smartphone can be used as a control center to remotely monitor security cameras, lock or unlock doors, switch off or on lights or smart TV, check the refrigerator contents, etc. Smart devices are, however, not created with security in mind, hence keeping them safe from potential hackers is critical and the onus is on the homeowner.

Switching on the Internet of Things in your home doesn’t mean you are done, you need to find a way of protecting your home network too as there is no anti-virus software installed in these smart appliances. You would never intentionally leave your front door unlocked and hence similarly, you need to protect the security of your smart devices too. You will need to lock down as much as you can and invest in fraud monitoring and identity protection for your home’s smart network.

As more and smarter appliances and devices are assigned Internet protocol addresses, protecting their network security from hackers has become the need of the hour. Here are some ways to protect your network’s security and the devices connected to it:

Secure your home’s wireless network

Use the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol along with a complicated password. Avoid the older WEP protocol which is easier to compromise.

 

Use an obscure name

Give your Wi-Fi network (SSID) an obscure name that is completely unrelated to you and cannot be easily tampered by hackers.

Multiple SSID’s

Invest in a router that can handle multiple SSIDs. This will give you the liberty to create two Wi-Fi networks. You can limit one network for the use of your smart devices and another one for your computers and smartphones used for shopping, surfing or online banking.

Disable guest network access

Limit access to those who can get onto the network.

Password management

Ensure that none of your network equipment or devices uses default factory-set passwords. Change all passwords into something suitably complex and keep changing them regularly. The user-names should also be changed to make them harder to crack.

For those on the look-out for smart homes, check out the unparalleled ‘Under the Sun’ villas nestled within a fruiting orchard in Devanahalli, Bangalore. Their contemporary designs make them perfect smart homes. For more information on them, click here: https://www.underthesun.co.in/.