Negosentro | How to Keep Your Home Tech Secure in 2022 | In today’s world of technology and home entertainment, our houses are full of gadgets and devices that offer us everything from on-demand viewing of our favourite movies and TV shows to the option of working from home and communicating effortlessly with friends around the world. In the last few decades, there has been a surge in the ownership and usage of tech devices for the home that has made our lives more efficient and more enjoyable. However, with this rise in tech usage comes the need to protect our devices and store our data safely. Cybercrime is on the rise and can affect homeowners as well as businesses. Home tech can often present easy pickings for cybercriminals as home networks can be less secure than in organizations. In addition, families often give phones and tablets to children who may be less aware of the multi-faceted threats posed by cybercrime. In this article, some of the key ways in which you can keep your home cyber secure will be discussed.
Virus Scan Your Phones Regularly
The average family home has at least three or more smartphones according to recent statistics. We use these to surf the internet, send and receive emails, and make purchases online. Most people are growing increasingly aware of cyber security, but do not always apply this knowledge to their home devices such as smartphones. In fact, many people would not know how to tell if your phone has a virus if you gave them a smartphone that had been infected. Some common signs that your smartphone has been subject to a cyber attack include slower than usual loading times, an increase in adverts appearing (indicating that malware has been put on the device), and excessive data consumption (which may show that a hacker is stealing your data). To improve the safety of your device, ensure that you run a virus scan on your phone regularly. Most modern smartphones now have inbuilt antivirus software, and it is simply a case of setting the phone to scan all the apps, data, and documents to check for issues.
Secure Your Home Wi-Fi
It is all too easy to give your home Wi-Fi set up an easy-to-remember and simple password. We tend to do this as we live in an age of having to remember multiple passwords and it makes our lives a bit easier. However, you are playing into the hands of hackers with simple passwords as these can be easy to crack in a brief period. Once a hacker has access to your home network, they are free to steal your data or even make purchases with your credit card details. Thankfully, this threat can be minimized in two simple ways. First, make sure that your Wi-Fi network is encrypted and is not visible to people in range of it. Second, it makes sense to choose a strong Wi-Fi password that is difficult to crack. Use a mix of numbers, letters and symbols that is not obvious. Making a complex password is easy and to store it securely using a password manager application so you don’t need to remember it or write it down.
Update Your Firmware
Smart TVs, some tech appliances and your smartphone will all have firmware installed on them. These pieces of software allow your tech hardware to do specific tasks and function effectively. It is important to ensure that your devices have the latest updated firmware installed on them along with any system updates. This is because these updates often include security upgrades for your devices along with fixes to enable them to run more smoothly. A device with the latest updates is, therefore, more resistant to cyber attacks.
Backup Important Data
In the home environment, our tech stores immense amounts of our data. In addition, if we work from home or create documents and information for home use, we are building a body of information that is important to us and has value. It, therefore, makes perfect sense to undertake regular backups of any work or information that is considered important or sensitive. This can be done by using external hard disk drives, or more commonly today by using secure cloud storage to hold and retrieve our data from encrypted platforms. It is good practice to do this at least monthly.
To Sum Up
Our home environments tend to be full of tech in today’s world. The risks of cyberattacks via our home networks are significant and must be recognized. However, these risks can be minimized with some basic IT security tips like those that would be used in the work environment.
