How to secure your home Wi-Fi router in 15 minutes

Every router's settings pages look different. To find yours, search online for the maker's name plus “how to change admin password” and “how to change Wi-Fi network password”, as the FTC suggests, or check the instructions that came with it. If your internet provider supplied the router, the provider can tell you.

Steps

1. Encrypt the network. In the router's wireless settings, choose WPA3 Personal, or WPA2 Personal if WPA3 isn't offered. Encryption scrambles what is sent over your network so others can't read it. If the only choices are WPA or WEP, they are out of date: update the router's software and look again, and if they are still the only choices, it is time for a new router.
2. Change the Wi-Fi network password. This is the one you type to join the network. Make it long and unlike any other password you use.
3. Change the router's admin password, and the network name. The admin password lets someone into the router's settings, where they could undo everything else. Don't use your name, address or the router's brand in either.
4. Update the router's software. Check the maker's website for a newer version. If the router came from your internet provider, ask whether it updates automatically.
5. Turn off remote management, WPS and UPnP. They are convenient, and they weaken your security: remote management lets the router be changed over the internet, WPS lets a device join without the password, and UPnP lets devices find each other.
6. Set up a guest network. Many routers offer one, with its own name and password. Fewer people then know your main password, and a visitor's phone with a problem can't reach your computers.
7. Log out of the router when you are done, and check that its built-in firewall is turned on.

If that didn't work

If a device can't join after you change the encryption, set the router to WPA2 Personal: the FTC says both WPA3 and WPA2 will scramble your information. If you can't get into the router's settings at all, contact the router's maker, or your internet provider if it supplied the router.

Three more ideas from CISA

• Keep an eye on which devices are connected, and remove any you don't recognize.
• Use different, strong passwords on every device and account.
• Consider turning Wi-Fi off when you will be away for a long time.

Once the router is done, look after the devices on it: keep them updated and run antivirus software.