It is pretty easy to purchase an inexpensive wireless router, plug it in, and have your wireless network up and running.  But without additional configuration tweaks, your network may be exposed.  There are only a few steps necessary to secure your wireless router.  Three of the most important things you can do are enabling encryption, change the router password, and disable remote administration.

Wireless encryption has major benefits.  First, it prevents unauthorized users from accessing your network.  Secondly, your network traffic is encrypted as it is sent out wirelessly, preventing others from snooping in on your data and even internet activities.  Without encryption, someone outside could listen, without even being logged into your network, to any of your network activity.  By doing so, they can see the websites you browse, intercept emails, and even user names, passwords, and websites you enter them at.  Enabling encryption at the wireless router will encrypt all wireless traffic.  For someone to log in and get that traffic, they will need the encryption key.

To enable wireless encryption:  You will need to log into your wireless router’s control panel.  Locate the wireless encryption options.  It likely will have a couple encryption options, such as WEP, WPA, and WPA2.  As of this writing, WPA2 is the preferred encryption.  WEP should be avoided if at all possible since it is not very strong (mathematically, it can be hacked in 5 minutes).  When setting up WPA2, use a pass phrase that is strong and not easily guessed.  Once setup, remember to configure your network clients to use WPA2 and enter the pass phrase.

Change the password: Wireless routers come with a default password set by the factory.  These passwords are usually very easy to guess and are very often listed online.  Anyone with the password could access to your router and reconfigure it, possibly locking you out.  Choose a strong password and write it down somewhere safe.  The only way to reset the password is to reset the router which will reset any settings you’ve changed.

Disable remote administration: Remote administration allows users to configure your wireless router from the internet.  Rarely should you need to configure your wireless router from over the internet.  Disabling this option ensures everyone out on the internet can not change your settings.

Additional security: For additional security, here are some additional changes that can be made.  Disable SSID broadcasts.  SSID broadcasts are broadcasts the router sends out letting others know the router is available to connect to.  Users can still find your router.  This option just makes it a little less obvious.  Another option is to use MAC filtering.  A MAC address identifies a computer’s network interface, sort of like an IP address.  By adding only those computers’ MAC addresses to the router, only those computers will be authorized to connect to the router.  Both of these methods are not 100% effective.  But combined with encryption and using strong passwords for both the router and the encryption, these will help secure your network.