When was the last time you changed the password for your router? Or, like many of us, has it never crossed your mind? 

From a cybersecurity perspective, routers remain a vulnerability–especially if those routers were foreign-made. In March of this year, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Office of Engineering and Technology produced a memo stating “malicious state and non-state sponsored cyber attackers have increasingly leveraged the vulnerabilities in small and home office routers produced abroad to carry out direct attacks against American civilians in their homes.” 

If criminals get your router password, they can:

• steal personal data
• spy on your browsing activity
• install malware
• use your internet connection for illegal activities

They can also lock you out of your own network, hijack your bandwidth to slow down your internet, and attack other devices connected to your Wi-Fi, such as laptops, phones, and smart home cameras. 

However, one easy way to guard against this vulnerability is to simply update your router’s password.

Tell me how

1. Connect your computer or smartphone to your router via WI-FI or Ethernet cable.
2. Open a web browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) and enter your router’s IP address in the address bar to access your Admin Panel.
   • Here is information on how to find your router’s IP address
3. Log in by using the default username and password printed on a sticker on the back or bottom or your router.
4. Locate your security settings and navigate to “Wireless,” “Passphrase,” or “Pre-share Key,” and enter a new, strong password (at least 16 characters long with a mix of letter, numbers, and symbols).
5. Click the “Apply” or “Save” button which will disconnect your devices and then reconnect using the new password.