The Smart Home

Smart Homes are no longer the wave of the future. Any of us can grab our phones, hop onto Amazon, and shop for a number of devices to turn our homes into a Smart Home. Most home improvement stores sell a variety of devices that will help us get there too. The DIY community is embracing smart home upgrades because it adds value to our homes (and let’s be honest, makes them techy and cool).

The whole idea behind a Smart Home energizes my inner geek! I love the idea behind walking into a bedroom and by voice command turning on the lights, or lifting the blinds, or starting the ceiling fan. I love the idea of playing music throughout my house on smart speakers and isolating which rooms the music plays in. I love having exterior and interior lights on smart switches that can be managed through an App on my phone to set up schedules for when the lights are on and off. I love being able to walk up to my door and unlock it with a fingerprint, or an App on my phone. I like discrete security cameras on the outside of my home to monitor different areas of my property without making my home look like Fort Knox. I especially love the smart thermostat that can be controlled with an App or by voice command that will also remind me to change out the air filter (because I never remember to do it myself).

Smart Homes and Home Automation are amazing things and add convenience to our lives but there is one thing that always lingers in the back of my mind when it comes to smart homes. How do we secure them? We are connecting the most private area of our lives to the internet when we install this cool and amazing technology. Privacy should be number one in your plan when converting your home into a Smart Home. It is important to understand how these devices need to be secured before you put them in place.

Here are three simple ways to go about protecting your privacy in your smart home.

1. Start by changing the default security settings on the devices you install. Default security settings can be found on the internet and therefore can be utilized by hackers to gain access to your devices. Simply by changing these settings to something unique for your system can assist in preventing a hacker from gaining access.

2. Keep everything up to date. Companies with good software and firmware maintenance plans will update often. This is typically done to fix bugs within software but it is also to fix things that can be exploited to gain access to your devices. If there is a setting to auto-update your devices make sure you have it selected. If there isn’t an auto-update option, make sure you periodically check to see if any updates are available. Creating some sort of schedule or plan to make sure this is done could be very useful.

3. Big, long, complicated passwords. Passwords are the bane to my existence. I have a ton of accounts and a ton of passwords to remember but I know the importance of complex passwords and changing them periodically. I highly recommend using a password manager. There are many on the commercial market and with a quick google search you can find one that best fits you.