 Today we're going to talk about seven small business network security tips on the journey. Now on today's episode we have a special guest, Alicia from Sokuri. She is the security expert to talk to us about these seven tips. Now I'm just going to let you dive in. What's tip number one? Tip number one will be to make sure that you're using really good hard to guess passwords for your Wi-Fi at home or at your work. Any way that you're connecting to the internet, you want to make sure that nobody else can get on to your network and then start to, you know, sniff the traffic. So password one is not a good password to use? Password one is really bad password. It like password makes the list every year for like the most compromised passwords. Essentially you want to look at three things with a password. They should be very complex. That means a mix of upper and lower case, symbols, and numbers. You also want to make sure that they're long. So the longer the better. Okay. More numbers, more characters, means more permutations for the password for a computer to guess and unique. You want to make sure that you're not reusing passwords for a lot of different things. So I need to be right back. I have to go home and change my Wi-Fi password really quick after those tips. So what's tip number two? Tip number two also related to Wi-Fi is to change your SSID. That's the little name of your Wi-Fi that you connect to when you're trying to pick the signal, you know, pretty fly for a Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi guy or Bill and I, the Wi-Fi guy. Tell my Wi-Fi love her. That's a good one. FMI band number seven. For sure. So not only are they fun, you can have a little bit of fun with it, but it also sends a message to hackers that this person most likely has changed their Wi-Fi password. Maybe I'll move on to the next target. Another really great tip is to make sure that you're changing the login for your router. So most of the time when you sign up for internet, your ISP will send you a router and it comes with, you know, the pre-installed SSID. Right on the box, right? Yeah. If you look on that box, there's usually some information about how to log into the gateway and change the settings for your router. So it's a little local website that only you can access from within range of your router. And it has a lot of settings in there, including the username and password, which if you leave that default, you're basically asking to get hacked at that point. The fourth tip is to also make sure that you're not broadcasting your SSID. So what does that mean? Yeah. So like it basically won't show up in the list of the Wi-Fi that you could choose. So it means it's just harder and harder for the hacker to try and find your internet access. You can't see me. Yeah. I mean, obviously you need to make sure that you've set it up. And if you have guests come over to the house, it may take a little bit longer to make sure you're typing in the SSID and the password for them. But you can all do all that stuff from the router access panel you're talking about. All right. Now, I know many of us entrepreneurs like to get out of the house or get out of the office every now and then and go to a coffee shop or a restaurant or just literally anywhere else. And there are sometimes those public Wi-Fi spots. How should we really be protecting ourself there? Definitely. Public Wi-Fi is definitely something you want to be aware of. Your device will automatically connect to the closest Wi-Fi signal. So you definitely want to disable that on your mobile phone, your laptop, because the closest signal may be coming from a hacker who has a fake wireless access point. These are actually not that expensive or difficult to set up. And they could still be getting internet access, but they're also looking at everything that you're looking at on the internet and can steal your passwords and that kind of stuff for your website. Not ideal. In the same vein, you also want to make sure you're using a VPN. Okay. What's a VPN? Yeah, a virtual private network is usually a paid service that you can use to connect to a proxy server so that all of your traffic is going through there instead of the wireless network. And it just makes it encrypted so that nobody can sniff on your traffic. So my tip number six would be to make sure that your antivirus is updated. This makes sure that you have the latest virus definitions to catch any emerging malware or attacks as they're out there. Okay. Not just for your computer, also for your mobile device. Make sure that you're protected and you have a way to block any attackers from getting in. Now, I know with the computers, there's usually a default antivirus. Are we just okay with that or should pay for antivirus? What does that look like? You know, go with the reputable ones and see what's out there. I am partial to malware bites. There's also some really good ones out there. Some of them are better at catching like newer variants of malware, but they're getting rid of older stuff in the database. Casper Ski is another really good one, Bitdefender. But definitely go out there and look at your options. And you know, if you stick with the one that's default installed, that's okay too. It's not a terrible idea to have a couple different options, although you only want active protection on one antivirus. So, what that's doing is it's scanning everything and coming to your computer kind of like a firewall. And if you have two of them doing that, they're kind of scanning over top of each other and it can really slow down your computer. But you can have as many antiviruses as you want as long as they're just for scanning every once in a while and you have one that's actively protecting you. And now we're on the final tip, tip number seven. What's tip number seven? Tip number seven is backups, backups, backups of your backups. You want, basically, you want them to be redundant. You want to have multiple copies in different locations. You want to make sure that they're automatic if you can because, let's face it, we don't remember. We forget. Totally, right? I forgot what I had for breakfast. I know. I'm terrible with my photos. My photos are not backed up properly right now, but I know, I know. But you know, there's cloud storage, so it is easy to do for a lot of this stuff. But you want to make sure it's in a reliable location and you want to make sure that you've tested your backups. So ideally, you know how to restore them and you've tested that it actually works. Trust, but verify. Exactly. Preach. It's at the end of the day, all that hard work, all those cute, cute photos of your kids, of your dogs, of you on the, on a beach, all gone plus your hard work. You don't want that to happen. Have those backups. Doubly important for your business, right? Yes. Totally. So there you have it. You've learned seven tips for your small business network security. We have again our special guest, Alicia from Security. Thanks for coming on the show today. Thanks, Justin. And if you've learned anything, go ahead and add that comment below on what you've learned. Smash that like button and subscribe to this channel if you want to see these videos first. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.