Smart home solution is designed by using the latest technology of IoT and connected devices. Conversion of your home into a smart home will let you manage every device at the tip of your finger. With a peaceful mind, convenience, and effectiveness of smart home services, you can automate everything right from the safety of your home to thermostats. Everything you can control and monitor on your smartphone with video cams, door locks, lights on and off, and a home thermostat.
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As the demand and implementation of smart homes are growing day by day, the features are becoming more and more extensive and advanced. But have you ever thought about whether your smart home is safe and secured from cyberattacks? Do you have any home security tips in your mind? You should think of it as you are sharing all your personal data on the smartphone application, and hence, you should always protect it from hackers and get some security ideas for your home.
There are numerous ways in which the users are taking benefit of the smart devices. However, this has also increased the risk of cyberattacks. These smart devices have become a crucial part of your daily routines. Considering all the advantages of a smart home, unlike any other smart technology, your smart devices are also prone to getting hacked by hackers. This can put your personal data and home safety at stake. Let us learn in detail about the cyberattacks on your smart home, along with security ideas for your home.
Firstly, let us understand how smart homes work and why there is a risk of cyberattacks on your smart home. Post that, we will understand in detail about best home security tips and home security ideas:
Smart home tools are designed by using devices that can be connected to the internet. These devices come with technology that enables you to control and monitor them remotely. For example, devices could be even a small coffee-making machine, or they can even be big, like the entire thermostat monitoring of your home. How are they different from our traditional remote-control systems? The use of internet protocol to connect them makes them different. All these devices are connected through the hub on your smartphone.
These connected devices will have the ability to collect and store the data on how you use them, your habits, your choices, and other personal data. This data could be collected either in the device or in your system. Whenever you add any new device, it comes with unique privacy policies. This puts your smart home at a potential risk concern as you will have to accept those policies while adding that device.
Look at the simple diagram below, which will give you an idea of smart home system works. Here, you can see the smartphone with the user interface is connected to devices using the internet cloud that uses numerous technologies like machine learning, IoT analytics, and big data.
Technically advanced gadgets and appliances do not assure you of complete safety and security. As such gadgets get integrated into our home systems, there is a high potential for home security susceptibilities and worries. Hence, you should follow certain home security tips and ideas for protecting your home.
Smart home vulnerabilities lie in their connectivity to the internet. Every smart device that can be connected to the internet can be hacked or accessed by hackers and, at times, can even be controlled by outsiders, similar to computer or website hacking.
There are a couple of devices that may not have the built-in security features that will make them more vulnerable to hacker attacks. On the other hand, devices may come with security settings that need to be enabled or managed by the owner. Hence, it is important to review the data book or manual that comes with the device to ensure that built-in security is there, and if not, then what are the steps to enable security settings?
The first step to prevent hacking is recognizing the way in which a device could be hacked and ensuring that all the required security settings are enabled so that your home security is enhanced along with your device security. All the cyber threats can be controlled if you follow a few improvised home security ideas with leading home security tips and tricks.
16 Tips to Secure Your Smart Home
Let us see what the different threats are caused by your smart devices to your home, and later, we will discuss a few best home security tips for your home.
1. Well-planned Attacks
Smart home devices collect a lot of your personal data right from your date of birth, debit card and credit card details, your choices, and much more. This data can be stolen by hackers if the devices are not well protected to prevent attacks.
This stolen data can be used by hackers to plan their attacks and rob you. For instance, a hacker can steal money from your account if the card details are hacked by him. Home security tips in such cases are to avoid sharing data wherever not needed and add security to the devices by enabling those features.
2. Identity Theft
At times, in the place of hacking only one person’s smart device to get his data, the hacker will get access to the database of the company for extracting data of all its clients. This massive data stealing can put the devices of a number of users at risk.
In case, unfortunately, your data gets stolen, then the hacker can even send applications for credit cards by making use of your name or even take a loan in your name. He can also put your identity in danger by impersonating you. Home security ideas for avoiding identity theft are adding multi-factor authentication and enhancing the security of smart devices.
The best way to protect your identity is to enlist for fraud protection. They are designed to keep your personal information secure, and they also insure you so you can have peace of mind that you are covered. There are a lot of options out there, so you need to make sure you choose the best identity theft protection service.
3. Password Manipulation
Many times, it happens that the password that you have set up for your smart home hub where all the devices are connected is not strong enough. This mistake can make way for smart hackers to easily get access to the smart hub and interfere with the settings of the smart devices. This can put home security at stake as the hacker can manipulate the settings of the lights, door locks, and warehouse locks along with the other device settings and homeowner data.
In this case, the best home security tips are using different passwords for different devices and accepting terms and conditions only after reading them carefully.
4. Location Tracking
It is obvious to trust the devices that you use for keeping all your data safe, at least the data where you live. But in reality, it is not so. These devices, if hacked, can give away the information of your location.
This makes it possible for the hacker to find and keep an eye on you in real time. For instance, if you click on any threatful link through your smartphone, your smart speakers can reveal the location of the user. The home security tip here is to turn off the location when not in need.
5. Home Infringements
There are high chances of tampering with the remote device. This comes with the chances of someone entering the house because of manipulating the security devices such as door locks and CCTV. Unknown security gaps in any of the smart devices can make room for hackers to hack these devices and deactivate the cameras or even open the door locks for criminal actions.
Home infringements are one of the major ways for hackers to hamper your smart home. Security ideas for your home, in this case, include checking all the device’s security settings carefully and enabling all of them for the protection of your home.
6. Third-Party Mistakes
With the use of third-party applications or smart home software, homeowners can manage the lights, door locks, and garage locks. But without security settings, these applications can allow other people to access the platform and manipulate the settings of lights and locks.
Apart from this, there are some applications that give permission to perform actions on your device without the need for any other security protocol. This can give access to hackers to lock or unlock the door at any time. Going through the privacy policies is hence always required. To overcome third-party mistakes and secure your home, one of the best home security tips is to not accept terms and conditions if they are not mandatory. In case you are accepting them, then share the minimal amount of data.
7 Outdated Software
Many times it happens that we keep on using any particular software without even checking the version of the software. If you are using outdated software, it is more prone to get hacked and get used for some criminal activities. The outdated software has less security and hence can be hacked. Home security tips and tricks for saving your home are using the updated version of the software from a reputed brand.
While designing your smart home with the Best smart home software, you should always keep in mind that every technology comes with risks if not secured properly. Here are a few best home security tips and tricks for securing your smart home:
8. Setting up the router precisely is important
Your Wi-Fi router is the place where all your smart devices are connected. Hence, setting it up correctly is very important. Make sure you don’t use the manufacturer’s name as your router’s name. Instead, keep one unique name for your router. Because if you keep the normal make and model name of the router, it will be easy for hackers to crack it and hack your entire system. The name that you set up for your router should not be related to the place where you stay. Show your creativity in selecting the router name without involving any of your personal details.
9. Unique and strong password always works best
Similar to what you did for the router name, like selecting the unique name, now it is time to select the unique and strong password. While selecting the password, always keep in mind that it should be complex and a mix of letters (capital and small), numbers, and symbols. There are numerous software available online that can help you in setting up a near-incomprehensible password. Setting up a strong password is one of the most followed security ideas for your home.
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10. Make use of the strongest encryption method
Always select the strongest encryption method for your Wi-Fi. Check which protocols your router supports. If it supports the WPA or even WEP protocol, then your Wi-Fi router is outdated and needs to be changed. Presently, WPA2 and WPA3 is the latest protocol that you can go for. You should make sure to check this in time as the hackers usually target home routers for their hacking purposes. Hence, it is important to have a secure router as it, in turn, secures your smart home.
11. Use different passwords for every login of your smart device
Once you are done with setting up your Wi-Fi router with a strong password, it is time to set up other device passwords as well. To use your IoT devices, you will have to register and sign in for using them. Such devices usually come with smartphone applications, where passwords and other credentials are required.
Make sure that you are not using the same password that you have used for your Wi-Fi router. For the IoT device logins, you should use unique and strong passwords. Suppose the password of one device is hacked the other devices will still be safe if you have different passwords for different devices.
The only concern with these passwords is that you will have to remember these many passwords, which is a tedious task. In case if you write these passwords somewhere, make sure that the diary is kept safe. These home security tips are a bonus for you as you have another way to store all these in the password management tool, which has the ability to store limitless unique passwords and can even help you create one. Some of the tools can even sync the passwords in the various devices as and when required.
12. Set up individual Wi-Fi networks for IoT devices
The latest Wi-Fi routers come with the feature of setting up the guest network, also called a secondary network. If you create an individual network for your IoT devices, it will be helpful for you to save your main or primary network against cyberattacks.
This will let your families, mates, and visitors log into the network, which is not linked to the devices that you are using. Hence, your main network is accessible to you and your immediate family.
Another reason for setting up individual networks is that if the hackers manage to get access to the network, they cannot access all the devices in one go. For example, they will not be able to access your computer, laptop, or smartphone with single access to your network. This is one of the security ideas for your home and IoT devices.
This will make sure that the hacker is limited at one point when it comes to gaining access. He cannot access your personal devices. So, you should always run your home on several network segments.
13. Enable only required features and disable others
There are numerous IoT devices that come with the feature of controlling from any location. But in case if you are using this feature only in your home, then that case, deactivate the remote access feature. Similarly, smart speakers come with the Bluetooth option along with Wi-Fi. Do you really use that option? If not, then deactivate it.
If you use virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google to control devices like smart TVs, then you definitely won’t be using voice control. It might look funny, but the active mic can be hacked and can also be used to spy on your conversations. Hence, deactivating such features can help you save your smart home from cyberattacks. Your best smart home software can show you a list of all the features that you are using, which can help you to deactivate the ones you are not. These home security ideas will also help you select the device as per your requirements.
14. Keep device software updated
At times, the updates on your Wi-Fi router’s firmware do not happen on their own. Usually, new updates come with important security protocols that can improve your network security. With such improvised home security ideas, you can enhance the security of your home. You should always keep an eye on the pending updates of your software. Once a month, schedule your update checking, and if there is any pending update, then go ahead and update it immediately.
In the same way, there are numerous IoT devices, along with their smartphone applications, that need manual updates. But they send notifications to you whenever a new update is available. Without hesitating and wasting time, go ahead and update them, as you don’t know what is waiting around the corner.
15. Activate multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication is the security method usually followed by banks in their online banking. As the name suggests, it is the two-factor authentication that enhances the security of your home and is one of the best home security tips. In this, every time you log into the device, along with the regular password, you have to give identity proof for getting complete access.
There are various ways in which you can provide the proof like OTP, which is the one-time password, verification codes usually shared on your smartphone or email at the time of login, or at times, there are even questions that you will have to answer to prove that it’s real you and not any hacker.
If, in case, the device does not support multi-factor authentication, then you can enable Google Authenticator as well. It will give you the same kind of added security. Apart from this, to enhance security at a higher level, you can use any branded and trusted third-party service.
16. It’s your turn to make a change
You can always buy branded devices and design one expensive smart home with one of the best smart home software. But in the end, making your smart home safe and secure is your responsibility. Make a note of all the security ideas for your home and enhance the security with these home security tips.
Therefore, take some time from your schedule to do some research before buying any product. Check for the reviews, check for the updates, and most importantly, check its privacy policy to know if it is vulnerable. Yes, you will have to invest some. After all, you have to make your dreamy smart home into a secure smart home with these improvised home security ideas.
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