Last Update: September 20, 2026
When I ran through my personal security audit a few months ago, I broke it down into four domains: Devices, Accounts and Credentials, Network Exposure, then finally Data and Backups.
Today I want to focus on the Network Exposure domain and specifically the home network security checklist that I personally use to reduce my network exposure.
I’ve been around networks long enough that I’ve learned the most common response to me mentioning network security is for people’s eyes to immediately glaze over and they tune out everything that gets said afterwards.
I mean, I get it. Network security isn’t exactly the most interesting topic in the world to people outside of the industry. Most people just buy a router, plug it in, and once the Wi-Fi is working, never touch it again.
It doesn’t help that the admin tools for most routers look like they were designed back in 2004 and then never touched again. Let’s face it, for most ISP issued routers, they basically were. It’s expensive to redesign an interface and if it’s not broken, why should they bother to fix it?
However, it’s important to remember that the router is the front door to every single device in your home network. It’s the single piece of hardware that decides what gets in and what stays out. That also makes it one of the most important places to spend an hour of your time to get it configured correctly.
So here is the home network security checklist that I actually use and the order it should be performed in. This isn’t some generic list that I pulled off the internet, but one that I sat down and compiled based on my personal experience of having spent nearly two decades in the IT sector, having studied networks, routers, and information security extensively.
According to CISA’s home network security guidance, a properly configured firewall and router are the baseline defense between your devices and the internet. That lines up with how I’ve structured this checklist. If you are short on time, I’ll flag the ones that matter the most with the text: Essential Step!
Why a Checklist?
I live in a reality where it’s not uncommon for someone in the corporate world to come to me with a vague request like ‘make my security better’ and expects results. That request doesn’t provide enough context to really do anything. ‘Better’ could be something like resetting a password or a complete overhaul of the network. The same is true in home networks.
If you want to gain real results, you need a checklist. You need to work through that checklist. Then you prove that the work got done. I also find that checklists remove the guesswork hurdle that stops most people from ever starting in the first place. It’s a lot easier to work through a checklist that someone else provides for you than to try and build one, especially if you don’t know what you are doing.
For this checklist, you just need very basic computer skills. You don’t need to know what a firewall is or how a router works. What you do need is about an hour, your router’s admin login (usually a sticker on the bottom or the side of your device), and a willingness to click around a settings menu you’ve probably never opened.
The Home Network Security Checklist I Actually Use
1. Change the Default Admin Password
Essential Step!
I put this one first on the list because it’s the one that matters the most. The login for your router’s admin panel is not the same thing as your Wi-Fi password. Most routers will have a default username and password that are either printed on the device or are a well known factory default like “admin/admin”.
For many years I did a bit of a side gig where people would have me come to their homes to troubleshoot various network and computer issues. If I had a nickel for every time I got into one of their routers with the default settings, I’d be a very rich man. That’s because all of these defaults are public information and very easily accessible.
Log in, find the administration or system settings, then change it to something unique that lives in your password manager.
This is an essential item on the home network security checklist.
2. Update the Router Firmware
Essential Step!
Firmware is the software running on the router and it gets patched the same way your phone or laptop does. The biggest difference is that nobody ever reminds you to update it. Honestly, most routers don’t update their firmware that often so this isn’t something you likely have to monitor constantly. But, it was probably never done at all.
Checking for a firmware update option in your admin panel. If your router supports automatic updates, turn that on. This is a five minute task that closes a surprisingly high number of real world attack paths and greatly limits your network exposure.
Just like it’s essential to keep your phone and laptop up to date, this is essential as well. That is why this is a must complete item on the home network security checklist.
3. Turn on WPA3
Essential Step!
OK, so this is where your eyes might glaze over a bit because I’m talking about wireless encryption standards. Don’t worry, it’s as simple as just selecting something from a dropdown. But before we get to that, let me explain what this is.
Wireless encryption standards determine how hard it is for someone nearby to eavesdrop on your network. Basically think about it this way. Your wireless network broadcasts everything on it out for everyone to see. If you put encryption on it, that scrambles the data and only people who have the code to unscramble it can see your data.
Now on the list there are probably a lot of types of encryption to choose from. Older standards like WEP and WPA are functionally broken at this point and so they shouldn’t be used.
In your wireless security settings, select WPA3 Personal if your router and devices support it. If it’s not supported, then WPA2-AES (WPA2 with AES Encryption) will be sufficient. CISA’s guide to securing your home Wi-Fi walks through this setting on a range of router brands if your admin panel labels things differently than I do here. If your router doesn’t support either of these, then it’s time for you to get a new router. Not only is $40 for a a new router cheap insurance against attacks, you’ll likely find that you get better performance out of your network.
Since wireless network encryption is one of the first things that people check when they are trying to break into your network, this is an essential item on the home network security checklist.
4. Confirm Your Built-In Firewall Is Actually On
Essential Step!
Most routers ship with a basic firewall enabled by default. That’s great, but not all of them do. Those that do can have firewall settings toggled off during a factory reset or a firmware update, which is not ideal.
Check the security section of your admin panel and confirm the firewall is active. While you are in there, check to see what inbound ports are open. If you don’t recognize why a port is open, then it’s worth investigating before you choose to just leave it alone.
Your firewall is the difference between people on the Internet being able to access your data or not. That is why this is also considered an essential item on the home network security checklist.
5. Disable Remote Management
Now we are getting into some of the items that aren’t essential, but are still important to check. Remote management, sometimes called WAN-side administration lets you log into your routers admin panel from outside your network.
Most home users don’t need this. I’m a power user and I don’t even need this. Leaving it on means anyone who finds your public IP address can attempt to login. I check this setting any time I run through my checklist. I have absolutely left it on by accident after a firmware reset wiped my configuration.
Now why isn’t this considered essential? It’s because I’ve also found that there are a lot of routers that don’t have this function.
6. Turn off WPS
Wi-Fi Protected Setup was designed to make connecting new devices easier, usually through a PIN or physical button.
Fun story unrelated to WPS, I had to walk my aunt through a saving a file on the computer. I told her to move the mouse to the screen to the Save icon and click. She physically picked up the mouse and placed it over the save icon before clicking the button. I learned patience that day.
Now I bring up that story because if you’ve got a relative like that, the ability to make connecting devices easier is a lifesaver. Especially if you are walking them through it over the phone.
However, once you’ve connected your devices you probably don’t need WPS anymore. WPS tends to be weak enough that on a lot of consumer routers, it can be brute forced. So unless you have specific devices that require it, it’s best to just turn it off.
7. Set Up a Guest Network
I learned this one the hard way. The only people who ever needed access to my Wi-Fi were close friends and family. No need for a guest network right?
Wrong! I have Sonos speakers and my sister thought it would be funny to sit out by the road and randomly play music throughout the house. She lived about 45 minutes away and we had no idea she was in the area. I thought we had been hacked or that our Sonos had gone haywire. Needless to say, we got a guest network the very next day and everyone got kicked off our primary wireless network.
Every device that is on your main network can potentially see and talk to every other device on it. In my case, that included my speakers. A guest network will keep visitors, their devices, and any potential threats that they might be carrying with them separate from your actual stuff. Almost every consumer router built in the last decade supports this, and it takes about two minutes to set up.
8. Put Smart Home Devices on Their Own Network
Smart Home devices such as smart bulbs, plugs, cameras, and speakers are consistently the least secure devices on a home network. This is largely because they generally have less processing power than other devices to support security and manufacturers tend to prioritize shipping fast over shipping secure.
If your router supports multiple networks for VLANs, then move your smart home devices onto their own network segment that is separate from your computers and phones. If your router doesn’t support that level of segmentation, putting smart devices on your guest network can be a reasonable fallback…depending on how much you trust your guests.
The reasoning behind this is simple: If one of the devices gets compromised, it shouldn’t have a clear path to your laptop or NAS.
Now with this one, I’m going to come clean and say this is the checklist item I haven’t fully implemented yet. I have a segmented network for my Smart Home devices and those items that are on it work amazing and I’m happy with the results. However, I have some devices that do not play nice with the segmented network. So those are still on my main network even though I don’t like it.
I bring this up because smart home devices can be touchy when it comes to network communication. Don’t get discouraged if you can’t get everything onto its own network. Getting 80% of your devices onto a separate network is a lot better than getting none of them there.
9. Disable UPnP
I can hear the groans from you now. UPnP? I thought he said no acronyms! UPnP stands for Universal Plug and Play and it lets applications and devices automatically open ports on your router without asking you first.
While convenient for things like game consoles and some smart devices, you can probably see why I added this to my home network security checklist. I don’t like things making changes to my network security without asking.
UPnP is a well known way for for malware to punch a hole through your firewall from the inside. I leave it off by default and I only enable it if I absolutely have to. It’s way better to figure out how to configure your firewall properly so that you don’t have to deal with UPnP.
10. Do a Final Walkthrough of Connected Devices
Essential Step!
Once everything above is complete, pull up your router’s device list and look at what is connected. This is less about fixing things and more about knowing a baseline of what is actually on your network. You don’t need to identify every single device on your network today, but you should be able to recognize the big ones and note that anything unfamiliar deserves a closer look.
I took this to a bit of an extreme. I track my devices on a spreadsheet with a ton of information on them. What I do is overkill for most people, but I also have a lot of devices on my network. On any given day it ranges from 54 to 98 depending on who is home and what I am doing . As someone who has network home lab that I’m currently using while I am working on various certifications it’s not uncommon for me to have an additional 15-20 items on the network that are specific to my studies.
Your network probably won’t have that many, but you’ll likely be surprised at how many you actually have. I made a bet with my friend that he had at least 15 devices on his network because he didn’t believe me. Then I started counting: Phone, Watch, Tablet, Laptop, Playstation. That was just stuff that I knew off hand that he had and he doesn’t live alone. For two of them, they had close to 20 devices.
I also had a bunch of devices I didn’t even know what they were. It wasn’t until I did a full inventory that I remembered I had things like picture frames that appear on my network.
The Password Manager: One Tool To Make Life Easier
You don’t need a ton of tools to work through a home network security checklist. The one tool I do recommend is a password manager. This makes it painless to generate and store strong, unique admin login passwords instead of reusing an existing one or creating and writing down something you will forget because you never use it.
Most router manufacturers also publish a support page for your exact model, and it’s worth a quick search for “[your router model] admin login” if the sticker on the device doesn’t match what you’re seeing on screen.
If your router’s app or web interface makes any of these ten steps genuinely impossible to find, that’s useful information too. Some ISP-issued routers hide firewall and remote management settings behind a locked-down interface specifically because they don’t want you touching them. If that’s the case for you, it might be worth asking your ISP whether you can use your own router instead of theirs.
The added bonus of this is that in general, your ISP will charge you a monthly fee for renting their router. My ISP charges $12 a month to provide a router. I opted to buy my own and not be locked into paying a monthly fee for a locked down piece of hardware.
How Often To Run Through This
This isn’t a one and done thing. You should run through this at least twice a year. Some things are really quick to check. If you haven’t made any changes to your network then it’s unlikely your encryption has changed and if you are still able to login, you know that your admin password is still up to date.
Running through your home network security checklist should be relatively quick. Unless you have a firmware update, the whole thing should take you less than 10 minutes after you’ve done it the first time. Largely things tend not to change that often unless you actually change them.
Sometimes they do though. Firmware updates can change things. Every few months I do a quick pass on my home network security checklist to check for firmware updates. I’ve had routers that basically never have firmware updates while my current one seems to update at least once a month.
I also like to keep an eye for anything new that has joined the network that I don’t know what it is. Sometimes family members will bring home devices and put them on the network without telling me, which leads me down the rabbit hole of figuring out what this unidentified device actually is.
If this is your first time through, don’t try to do all ten steps in one sitting if you are feeling overwhelmed. Just changing your admin password and updating your firmware will close the most realistic risks., The rest can wait a few days until you are ready to tackle them.
What This Checklist Won’t Fix
I’m going to be completely up front with you, this checklist has limits. My home network security checklist covers network exposure specifically, which is one of the four domains from my original personal security audit. It does nothing for reused passwords, forgotten old accounts, or backups that have never actually been tested. Those are separate problems that need their own process, and I’ve already written about how I approach the accounts and credentials side of things.
A locked down router with a reused password behind it is still a target. Network security and account security solve different problems and you need to solve both.
Where This Fits Into the Bigger Picture
I’ve written before about digital minimalism and why I think decluttering your digital life matters. Securing your home network is the part of that picture people skip, because it doesn’t feel like decluttering. But an unsecured router undermines everything else you’re doing to build a more intentional relationship with technology, the same way a digital reset doesn’t help much if the account behind your phone was never actually secure to begin with.
You don’t need to be an IT professional to work through this. You need an hour, your router’s login, and a willingness to actually open the admin panel instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. Start with the password and the firmware update. Everything else on this list can happen over the next few weekends.