PEOPLE – Following an incident where a hacker allegedly accessed a Ring camera in an 8-year-old Mississippi girl’s room, here are some tips to protect your devices
After an 8-year-old Mississippi girl was allegedly contacted by a stranger through a Ring camera in her bedroom, many parents are wondering what they can do to make sure their own security devices are safe from hackers.
“The problem is that many users do not think of these devices as working just the same as a computer; they have the false ideal that something as innocent as a baby monitor cannot put their homes and families at risk,” reads a March 2018 blog post on the National Cyber Security Alliance’s website, written by parenting expert Giselle May. “Without proper security, infant monitors can be an open door into your life.”
The post goes on to offer tips on keeping your baby monitors safe, like researching the most well-reviewed products, knowing the “ins and outs” of your device well enough should an incident occur and purchasing a monitor with a frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) radio signal as opposed to direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS).
Other tips for secure baby monitors, according to May, include options for a digital monitor rather than an analog one, regularly updating related software, making sure your wireless network is secure with a custom network ID and password (changed from the default manufacturer setting), disabling SSID broadcasting to hide your Wi-Fi network from prying eyes and encrypting your wireless data.
