If you are connecting a few computers together then you need a router, and if you are using a router, you have a device that can help lock down your home network - it's as simple as that. First off, change the password to access your router - these passwords are defaults that are the same for each brand, and, of course, it's very easy to break into a router if you know the password already. The second thing to do is to turn on the firewall, some form of which is included in almost every router out there, often referred to simply as "content filtering" or "block services" - this will normally cause no problems with a normal web browsing home network, but if you want to access your home network from the outside world, these are referred to as externally-initiated connections, you can open up a door to specifically allow just that traffic and still keep your home network safe. This is something you can do on pretty much any router, whether you have a wired or a wireless network, but understand that every doorway in allows both legitimate and illegitimate traffic in.

If you have a wired network, you can stop and skip to the end from here - wired networks don't carry the potential security risks of WiFi or WLANs. Wireless security, though, is weak to non-existent out of the box, but there are a few easy things to do that make that kind of network a lot more secure:

1. Enable and use WEP, or Wired Equivalency Privacy, is essentially a password used to access a wireless network and is used to encrypt all the packets sent, making them look like gibberish to anyone sniffing them out.
2. Lock down wireless access to only permitted MAC addresses - a MAC address is hard coded into every network card, wireless or not, and is very difficult to fake, so by only allowing the MAC addresses encoded on the network cards on your computers, you can block out any others.
3. Don't broadcast out your SSID, which is like a lighthouse beam that signals where your wireless router is in the airwaves, and change the name of the SSID to anything else - out of the box, most SSIDs are "default" or the brand name of the wireless router, so by hiding the advertising of your network and changing its name, you can make it a lot harder for a snooper to even find your network.
4. Use a non-standard channel for your wireless network, which is just one more way to move your traffic away from where someone may expect it to be.

These four steps will only take a few minutes to get done, but will give a significant boost to the security of your wireless network.

For the computer side of things, well, some operating systems don't carry the inherent risks of viruses - most viruses target the Windows operating system, whereas Apple and Linux systems get off virtually scott-free. Another interesting tidbit is that the majority of viruses exploit holes in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with few exploiting holes in Netscape or Firefox, etc. So, you have two choices: give up or patch up.

Give up - abandon the most targeted platforms and change neighbourhoods - the scenery in Apple Town is nice and Firefox Lane is a nice drive. Even the most experienced computer geeks can get hit by a bug that takes a few hours to eliminate.

Patch up - keep completely up to date on your patches, think twice (or three times) before clicking on any attachments in your inbox even from people you know, and run virus checking software weekly, and spyware checking software monthly. Yes, it's not as exciting and involves a little more work, but it will make your computing experiences safer.

copyright © 2007 home computer tips