The IP security camera industry has blossomed over the past few years. From consumer-grade home IP security cameras, such as those from Swann , to professional-grade models, the technology is getting easier to use and more people are installing cameras to watch their property and even their pets. As with most tech solutions, however, home security video setups are increasingly targeted by hackers and bots.
Protect yourself by following some common-sense security-hardening procedures.
Keep Your Cameras Local
If you don’t want your camera feeds to end up on the internet, then don’t connect them to the internet.
If privacy is your top priority then you should keep your cameras on a local network and assign them non-routable internal IP addresses (i.e 192.168.0.5 or something similar). Even with non-routable IP addresses, your cameras could still be exposed by camera software that sets up port forwarding or uses UPnP to expose your cameras to the internet. Check your IP camera’s website to learn how to set up your cameras in local-only mode.
If Your Camera Is Wireless, Turn on WPA2 Encryption
If your camera is wireless capable, you should only join it to a WPA2-encrypted wireless network so that wireless eavesdroppers can’t connect to it and access your video feeds.
Change the default account password as strong as you can. Keep them out!