What to do if you suspect there are intruders on the Wi-Fi

Steps if someone steals Wi-Fi

Although the security of Wi-Fi networks has improved markedly in recent years, it is not uncommon for there to be intruders. Especially this happens when we make mistakes when creating passwords and protecting the network. We can leave a door open for anyone to access. If this happens, we must take action as soon as possible.

Change your password

The first thing we should always do when we see that there are intruders on a network is to change the passwords. It is the same as we would do if, for example, we see that someone has entered our Facebook or Gmail account. It is the main barrier that will prevent someone from entering and we must restore it.

This must be applied to the Wi-Fi key, logically. We must make sure to use one that is secure, that contains all kinds of letters (upper and lowercase), numbers and symbols, but also good encryption. But in addition, it is essential to change the password to access the router, since this can be used by a possible intruder to change the settings at will.

Verify that your router is up to date

The next thing will be to check that the router is updated correctly. If we have had intruders,the cause may have been some vulnerability in the device. Sometimes errors appear that are exploited and serve to have full access to a device and control the network.

The same applies to network adapters as well. Sometimes they have outdated drivers and that means there are bugs that could be exploited. It is advisable at all times to have the latest versions available.

See if there are any vulnerable devices

The problem may be on some device that are vulnerable. It may happen that, for example, we have an IoT device with a security flaw and it is the way of entry. It can be a surveillance camera that we have, a television, a video player ... Any device.

The ideal is always to verify that we have the latest version of the firmware in this type of devices. They are widely used by cybercriminals to access a network. It is essential to check that everything works well, and that there is nothing strange.

Detect future intruders

There are tools to detect intruders on Wi-Fi. We can use them to detect as soon as possible any unwanted access. We will not always notice that the Internet speed works slowly or that we can not enter certain devices.

These programs are very useful to manage our connections, see what computers are connected, when they have connected, etc. It is one of the actions that we must perform periodically to maintain good security in the network.