Beef Up Your Smart Home Security in 5 Easy Steps

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As smart homes get smarter, security and privacy become increasingly important.
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If we’ve learned anything from the last two years during the pandemic, it’s how to manage spending a significant chunk of our time at home. At Las Vegas’ annual  in January, smart home experts told audiences that while life at home is expected to become more convenient and connected, smart home privacy is also a growing concern.Tech giants like , , , and other smart device manufacturers are working towards creating a more seamless, intuitive and hyper-personalized connected home environment. With you’re already pouring into your smart home devices, you’ll need to give extra consideration to how you’ll protect that data and improve your privacy as your home environment becomes even more connected. As ResMed Chief Medical Officer Dr. Carlos Nunez explained, connected devices pull together disparate pieces of data that seem innocuous, but which can give companies insights into your life that “could potentially be dangerous in the wrong hands.”  

“It is a brave new world and a lot of it’s accelerated by the pandemic. This acceleration of our lives going online and becoming more virtual isn’t going to go away,” Nunez went on to tell CES audiences, adding that “most consumers… don’t even understand the magnitude to which their privacy is essentially gone.”At CES 2022 in Las Vegas, privacy experts discuss privacy laws and how to protect consumer data in the evolving digital age.
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At the same time, smart home device manufacturers are pushing to put more devices in your home, with greater interoperability between those connected devices. During Samsung’s keynote presentation at the conference in Las Vegas, SmartThings product engineering head Mark Benson said this interoperability aims for a “unified and intelligent home experience.”Katherine Shin, vice president of customer experience at HVAC system manufacturer Trane, said interoperability between connected devices will mean more choices for consumers and that the Home Connectivity Alliance is committed to smart home data security. The HCA is a group of appliance manufacturers including Samsung, Trane and GE, whose mission is to promote safety, security and interoperability within the connected smart home environment.”Not only are members of the HCA working feverishly to ensure that products run reliably, we’re also going to ensure that data that runs through those products is stored in a secure environment,” Shin added.As our homes become smarter and our lives become increasingly connected to the internet, the conversation around is gaining steam. Jamie Susskind, tech policy advisor for Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, also weighed in on the importance of securing connected devices.”IoT, while it was like a buzzword back in 2015, you know, now it’s the thing that we actually need to be thinking about as far as how do we secure these devices, and how do we do that within the broader ecosystem. And that’s, you know, both the government and the private sector’s challenge to face it,” Susskind said.Data privacy laws won’t do much to protect you from malicious actors, and some leading smart device manufacturers face Congressional scrutiny and lawsuits over their data-collection and security practices. So it’s up to you to bolster your security and privacy if you want to make your smart home safer. Here are your must-know tips on how to secure your smart home devices.SmartThings product engineering head Mark Benson speaks about the “unified and intelligent home experience” at CES 2022 in Las Vegas.
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5 easy ways to boost your smart home security Use a VPN on your routerWhen you use a , you can protect your privacy by preventing others from getting a view of your smart home activity. Provided you have a VPN-compatible router, will all work well on your router and provide you with a secure, encrypted connection to the internet. This means that nobody will be able to monitor any of the activity on the smart devices you’re connecting through your -enabled router — not even your ISP. This is helpful if you want to , or if you want to make sure nobody has eyes on what smart devices you have in your home and what data they’re transmitting over the internet.    Secure your Wi-Fi network and connected devices with strong passwordsYou wouldn’t keep the front door to your house unlocked and wide open for anyone to enter as they please. By the same token, close the door to your home Wi-Fi network with a password. It can take a mere , however, so leaving your Wi-Fi network vulnerable with a weak password is akin to leaving your front door unlocked even after you’ve closed it. Securing your home network with a is the first deadbolt that protects your smart home from intrusion. Similarly, yo