Tech Data has enhanced its StreamOne cloud platform with new features to improve customer experience and support partner growth across Asia. Read...

Guidewire has unveiled AI-enhanced underwriting and claims applications, aiming to boost insurance productivity with features like Claims Intel and Las Leñas. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros 1080p at 60Hz, which adds to a “TV-like” feeling Excellent utility software doesn’t compete with other apps Solid image quality, if maybe a bit dim Excellent zoom function Cons No integrated mic HDR didn’t noticeably improve the camera quality AI features require Nvidia SDK A little pricey Our Verdict Elgato’s Facecam Mk. 2 addresses a number of shortcomings of the original, excellent 1080p, 60Hz webcam. The lack of an integrated mic is its only major shortcoming. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Elgato Facecam Mk. 2 Retailer Price $149.99 View Deal $149.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket If Elgato’s Facecam Mk. 2 sounds like a sequel, that’s exactly what it is. Unfortunately, the lack of a key feature — a microphone — still hasn’t been resolved, leaving this 1080p webcam still a little overpriced. Otherwise, it’s quite good. Our review of Elgato’s original Facecam noted several features were left out, including a privacy shutter and HDR. To its credit, Elgato listened, and those features have now been built in. The Facecam is one of the few webcams that captures at a TV-like 60Hz, though at fixed focus. It also maintains its Sony CMOS sensor, a strong point in favor of the original Facecam. If 1080p resolution is too limiting, Elgato also sells a 4K60 “Pro” version for $299 — though that webcam lacks a mic, too. (Elgato’s argument is that these mics were originally built for streamers, and streamers will have already purchased an upgraded, standalone mic anyway.) If the Facecam’s MSRP of $149.99 is too much, Elgato also has a cheaper 1080p model, the Facecam Neo. Our Facecam Neo review found it somewhat limiting, however. This review informs our ongoing list of the best webcams for your PC. Elgato Facecam Mk. 2: Build quality The Elgato Facecam Mk. 2 is of average size, about 3 inches wide and 2.5 inches deep. It’s about 1.25 inches high, when the mount is excluded. A removeable USB-C cable plugs into the back of the webcam, connecting to a USB-A port on your PC. I took a yardstick and confirmed the cable’s 79-inch (about 6.5 feet) length. Elgato recommends that you plug the cable into a USB 3.0 (5Gbps) port on your PC, instead of a hub; this shouldn’t be an issue on a new PC, but double-check if you use an older one. Elgato’s Facecam Mk. 2 wasn’t heavy enough to overburden my laptop.Mark Hachman / IDG The Facecam clamps onto your monitor using a “tooth” that juts over the top of your display or laptop; a pair of “jaws” allows the webcam to rest against the back of your display. You can then manually adjust the webcam down or up to center yourself. There’s nothing especially unique about the design, although I prefer webcam “jaws” to be made out of something soft or sticky, to prevent the webcam from jiggling around — the Facecam Mk. 2’s plastic is a bit smoother than I’d like. I don’t ever detach a webcam to mount it separately, but there’s a standard 0.25-inch threaded hole in the base of the webcam for a separate mount, along with a thumbscrew to detach and secure it. A small LED lights up when the camera in use. Otherwise, you can crook a finger or thumbnail to drag the privacy shutter from one side. Since the webcam lacks a microphone, you don’t have to worry about being heard. Mark Hachman / IDG Elgato Facecam Mk. 2: Performance Elgato recommends that you download the Elgato camera app (Camera Hub) before you start using the webcam, and the app was one of the highlights of our earlier Facecam review. Why? Many webcam apps contend for control of the video output, including preview. If you’re in Zoom or Teams, for example, and decide that you don’t like the way you look, you often must shut down that app to allow the webcam’s preview function to work. Elgato’s Camera Hub software doesn’t operate like that — you should be able to make real-time adjustments to brightness, contrast, or zoom in the Camera Hub app, and see those show up in real time in the other application. It’s worth noting that the Camera Hub software has advanced fairly significantly over the past few years. As it does now, it offers both manual and automatic controls for the picture, exposure, white balance, and more. But the camera now has an adjustable field of view/zoom function, which zooms in from 85 degrees on in, and can cut out most of the background. Elgato’s omission of an integrated mic really hurts this webcam’s appeal for a mainstream audience. Otherwise, the Facecam Mk. 2 performs quite well, with utility software that’s truly excellent. A shot using Elgato’s Facecam Mk. 2, using the Camera Hub software. It’s essentially the same as the image below, but zoomed in with the camera controls visible.Mark Hachman / IDG For that matter, the webcam now includes face-tracking features, blurring and background replacement. It does so (at least on my laptop, which included a discrete GPU), using an Nvidia video SDK. Installing that SDK tripped my laptop’s Local Security Authority protection, a security feature within Windows 11’s core isolation, and blocked the installation. Microsoft’s support documentation says that Windows is supposed to analyze when this happens, but I had to manually override it to get it to install. I was quite impressed with the photos that the Elgato Facecam Mk. 2 took. I actually took this photo first, in afternoon side light. For some reason, it looked much brighter on my laptop’s display as it took this shot than in the screenshot that I captured — bright, well exposed, with great color accuracy. At default settings, the field of view is at its widest at 82 degrees. Flipping on the HDR didn’t really do anything in dimmer lighting situations, but it’s quite useful to even out the shadows and lit areas under these conditions. For 1080p, it was quite good. Mark Hachman / IDG About the only thing I didn’t like was that the webcam doesn’t really seem to make any adjustments when changing the exposure. My indoor, office shots (a bit down the page) use a screen because there’s a window directly behind me, which affects the exposure. A good camera will adjust for my face, blowing out the window’s light. I didn’t quite see that, and adjusting the controls for spot or average metering didn’t really make a difference. You can’t specify a spot (such as my face) and use that as the “correct” point to adjust the lighting. What you can do with this camera is manually configure the ISO and shutter speed, which allows you to brighten up the image without the need for external lighting. This is fairly unique. Note that the Camera Hub software has color temperature controls, which allows you to make some adjustments for skin tone. My example shots leave it in the “auto” mode, however. Downstairs in my dimly lit cave of an office, most of the light is artificial. Perhaps it was just the brightness of my monitor, but the images looked a bit more vibrant on my screen as I was taking screenshots. I can’t deny that the images are a bit dimmer than some of my other test webcams that I used for comparison, so you’d be best served by taking photos and video in brighter light. Mark Hachman / IDG Since the Elgato Facecam Mk. 2 lacks a microphone, I was unable to test it. Should you buy the Elgato Facecam Mk. 2? The lack of an integrated microphone is a big omission — not for streamers, but for the average user. On the other hand, your laptop probably includes an integrated microphone — desktops don’t, however. If you reside in the former camp, you may be able to get away with buying this webcam, which is otherwise very good. I honestly think the screenshots, for whatever reason, undersell the quality of the camera’s shots. Elgato’s Camera Hub utility is straightforward and practical as well, and adds value. I still feel like Elgato is charging too much for this webcam, especially as it’s missing a key piece. But I was also quite impressed with what it did deliver. If you have access to a standalone or integrated mic, Elgato’s Facecam Mk. 2 is absolutely worth a look. Read...

Google just announced that it has started equipping its online document editing tool Google Docs with new AI features. Google’s own AI tool, called Gemini alongside OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, has been able to generate images for a while now, but soon you’ll be able to use Gemini to create AI-generated images directly within Google Docs itself. Google If you frequently use Google Docs, whether for personal use or as part of a larger team, and if you often need images and illustrations to support your text, this feature will boost your productivity. When you want to insert an AI-generated image into Google Docs, simply go to the Insert menu, then select Cover image > Help me create an image. You’ll then be able to describe what you want the image to be and choose from several different visual styles and formats. Gemini will then use the Imagen 3 AI model to generate a few different versions of the image that you can choose from. Google The new image-generating AI feature began rolling out to Google Docs users in the “Rapid Release domain” on Friday, November 15, 2024. Google will later start rolling out the feature to all other “Scheduled Release domain” users starting on Monday, December 16, 2024. To use the image generation in Google Docs, you’ll need to pay for a Gemini Business, Gemini Enterprise, Gemini Education, Gemini Education Premium, or Google One AI Premium subscription. Further reading: Are premium AI chatbots worth paying for? Well… Read...

Don’t underestimate the power of a mini PC. Just because it’s tiny doesn’t mean it can’t pack a punch — and this Beelink SER5 mini PC that’s on sale is powerful enough to blow you away and then some. Though it would normally cost you $359, which is already a fantastic price for what you get, right now you can snag it for just $271. This is a Prime-exclusive deal, but if you don’t have Prime, you can simply sign up for a 30-day free trial to score this price anyway. Make sure to clip the on-page digital coupon for the extra discount on top! This mini PC features a powerful AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor alongside 16GB of DDR4 RAM, which means you’ll easily multitask day in and day out, running as many apps as you need at once as well as all those Chrome tabs you’re reluctant to close. Plus, if you ever want more power, you can later upgrade the RAM to a total of 64GB. This Beelink SER5 model also comes with a 500GB M.2 SSD, which should be more than fast enough for day-to-day use, transferring files, and storing all your photos, documents, and apps. If you can upgrade the SSD later if you run out of space, and it supports up to 2TB drives. All that aside, one of the best reasons to get this mini PC is that it comes with triple 4K display support. Yes, you read that right! This miniscule PC — which barely measures 5 x 4.4 x 1.6 inches — can take on three monitors up to 4K@60Hz each thanks to its HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C video input options. It’s a multitasker’s dream come true. Go ahead and take advantage of this superb deal and get the Beelink SER5 mini PC for just $271 on Amazon. Remember that this deal is only for Amazon Prime members (sign up for a free trial to score this price) and you’ll need to click the digital coupon on the product page for the extra $18 discount that brings it down this far. Get a mini PC for a fraction of its priceBuy now on Amazon Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Long battery life (nearly 24 hours in our test) Beautiful AMOLED display Solid 2-in-1 design with included S Pen No software compatibility concerns, as with ARM laptops Cons Multithreaded performance is on the low side Keyboard isn’t the most comfortable A little expensive Our Verdict The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is an excellent 2-in-1 laptop with long battery life thanks to Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware. But Lunar Lake’s focus on battery life comes at a cost, and this hardware doesn’t excel at multi-threaded CPU performance. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is one of the first laptops to arrive with Intel’s new Lunar Lake hardware. Under the hood, Lunar Lake delivers serious power efficiency improvements over previous-generation Intel Meteor Lake-powered laptops. Samsung also provides an excellent 16-inch laptop for Lunar Lake to shine, complete with a beautiful AMOLED touchscreen along with a 360-degree hinge and stylus for some 2-in-1 action. However, the keyboard isn’t as nice as the display. Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Specs The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU. This is an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processor, also known as Lunar Lake. It includes eight cores: Four performance cores and four low-power efficiency cores, integrated Intel Arc graphics, and an NPU that delivers up to 47 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance, which is enough to meet Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC requirements. Samsung loaned us a review unit with a different hardware configuration than the model it’s currently selling. Our review unit had 32GB of RAM along with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor. Samsung isn’t currently selling that configuration. The machine Samsung is selling has 16GB of RAM along with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor. Samsung is selling that model for $1,699. CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X RAM Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics NPU: Intel AI Boost (47 TOPS) Display: 16-inch 2880×1800 AMOLED touchscreen with 120Hz refresh rate Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Webcam: 1080p camera Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), 1x USB Type-A (USB 3.2), 1x HDMI 2.1a, 1x microSD card reader, 1x combo headphone jack Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader for Windows Hello Battery capacity: 76 Watt-hours Dimensions: 13.99 x 9.93 x 0.50 inches Weight: 3.73 pounds MSRP: $1,699 For many people, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is exactly what the doctor ordered: A traditional Intel-powered laptop that can run x86 software with no compatibility concerns, incredibly long battery life, and even more graphics horsepower than you might expect. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s design is very similar to the recent Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge I also reviewed. It’s a 16-inch almost-all-metal design that feels nice and premium thanks to all the solid aluminum in its chassis. It’s all silver or gray with a black bezel around the screen and black keys on the keyboard. At 3.73 pounds, this isn’t the absolute lightest laptop, but it’s a very reasonable weight for a 16-inch all-metal machine. That’s especially true when you consider that this is a 2-in-1 machine with a touchscreen and included “S Pen” stylus along with a 360-degree hinge that lets you rotate the screen open the entire way. The hinge is solid and works well without a lot of wobble, even when you adjust or open the laptop with one hand. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 has a full-size keyboard complete with a number pad on the right side of the laptop and a white backlight. It’s a chiclet-style keyboard that feels okay to type on, and I had no trouble quickly getting up to speed on it — which is the real test for a laptop keyboard. However, the key travel is on the shallow side. The keyboard doesn’t feel as premium as the rest of the machine. Like on that Snapdragon-powered Samsung Galaxy laptop, this machine has an absolutely huge trackpad that sits below the keyboard, off-center, and to the left side. The trackpad feels nice and smooth to use, and that huge surface is nice while you’re using the trackpad. Still, it’s not as premium-feeling as the haptic trackpad found on the Surface Laptop 7. (To be fair, haptic trackpads are still hard to come by.) The biggest issue with the layout is visible in the photos here. This is a big 16-inch laptop, and the layout of the trackpad and keyboard pushes the typical keyboard area to the top-left area of the keyboard tray. It’s unlike many other laptops I’ve used, and you may prefer a keyboard without a number pad and a smaller trackpad. Still, the layout isn’t as awkward as it may look in photos. Palm rejection works well, and I had no problem typing quickly at speed once I figured out the right place to rest my hands on the keyboard. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s display is a highlight. This laptop includes 3K (2880×1800 resolution) AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It looks beautiful, as OLED displays tend to, with beautiful vivid colors and a good amount of brightness. The AMOLED technology likely helps this machine squeeze more battery life from its hardware. Samsung also says this screen has an anti-reflective coating. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked outside on a sunny day, especially since OLED screens with glossy coatings tend to struggle in that scenario. It’s also a touchscreen that supports stylus input, complete with an included S Pen — thankfully, that’s bundled and not sold separately. Between that and the 360-degree hinge, this is a great machine for drawing, notes, and other pen-related 2-in-1 tasks. The S Pen input works well, with a pleasantly rubbery feeling that provides varying levels of pressure. It feels nice and smooth and tactile, not like you’re dragging hard plastic against a screen. This machine has solid speakers for a laptop: Loud, clear, and without as much bass as you’ll find in dedicated speakers or headphones. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 includes a 1080p webcam that produces a fine image. I found the image quality was better outdoors in natural light, and it wasn’t quite as good indoors. While this is far from the best webcam I’ve used on a laptop, it’s still usable enough for online meetings. Thanks to the NPU, this machine also offers Windows Studio Effects so you can activate features like forced eye contact and background blur in any application you use your webcam with. There’s no physical webcam privacy shutter, however, which is a shame — that’s always a nice privacy feature to have. The integrated microphone has great audio quality, however. I have no criticisms to level there. The microphone is exactly what I’d hope to find in a laptop like this one. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 includes a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello biometric sign-in. It’s located at the top-right corner of the keyboard, above the Num Lock key, and it doubles as the power button. It works well, but I do wish this machine also had an IR camera for facial recognition. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 offers a reasonable selection of ports. On the left side, it offers two Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports along with a HDMI 2.1 port. Bear in mind that this laptop charges via USB-C, so one of those ports will be used for charging. On the right side, this machine has a single USB Type-A port (USB 3.2), a microSD card reader, and a combo headphone jack. Overall, it’s a reasonable selection. Some people will want more USB-C ports, others will want more USB Type-A ports, and some will want extra ports like an Ethernet jack for a wired network connection. Luckily, you can always add a dongle. This laptop also has great wireless connectivity and supports the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 standards. These are now standard as part of Intel’s Lunar Lake package, and it’s great to see modern laptops start to deliver Wi-Fi 7 compatibility out of the box. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Performance The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 delivered great performance in day-to-day desktop productivity applications, where I used it largely on battery power. That’s exactly what I hoped to see. As always, we ran the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall PCMark 10 score of 7,220, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 beat the Dell Inspiron 16 with its previous-generation Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake) CPU. The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor in this laptop was also faster than the Core Ultra 7 256V chip found in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, another Lunar Lake-powered machine we recently reviewed. However, it wasn’t as fast in raw performance as the AMD Ryzen AI-powered machines I recently reviewed, including the Asus ProArt PX13 and HP OmniBook Ultra 14. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 delivered a multithreaded score of 4355 here. Intel’s Lunar Lake processors just don’t do well in this benchmark. That’s no huge surprise, as this benchmark is all about multithreaded performance. They have only eight cores, split between four “performance” cores and four “efficient” cores. The AMD Ryzen 9 HX 370 and 375 processors in this comparison have twelve cores. This isn’t representative of real-world desktop application use — these machines don’t feel like they’re running at half the speed of a machine with a recent AMD processor in normal desktop use! However, these processors just aren’t built for maximum performance in heavily multithreaded applications. But Lunar Lake does deliver longer battery life than those AMD Ryzen AI-powered machines in our testing. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 completed the encode process in 1445 seconds, or just over 24 minutes. Once again, Lunar Lake just isn’t doing particularly great on these heavily multithreaded benchmarks. It’s worth remembering that the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 is a 16-inch laptop, just like the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus we’re comparing it against. This machine delivers better battery life and it’s about three-quarters of a pound lighter. But that Dell, with its older CPU, delivers better raw CPU performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3DMark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. With a 3DMark Time Spy score of 4,409, this machine delivered good performance for integrated graphics! The Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics in this machine beat the Radeon 890M integrated graphics in that AMD Ryzen AI 9 chip. It was only outclassed by laptops with discrete NVIDIA GPUs. Overall, performance is okay for a laptop like this one, as long as you’re not doing heavily multithreaded CPU-hungry activities. And the graphics performance is very good for integrated graphics. But while the raw performance doesn’t stand out in multi-threaded CPU benchmarks, the entire package comes together and becomes compelling when you turn to battery life. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Battery life The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 includes a 76-watt-hour battery. In day-to-day PC usage, battery life was excellent, and the laptop just kept on going. After the mixed experience I had with Intel Meteor Lake-powered laptops, I’m so happy that laptops with the latest processors — Intel’s Lunar Lake, AMD’s Ryzen AI, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X — all deliver reasonable battery life. But Intel hasn’t just caught up. Lunar Lake delivered some eye-popping battery life numbers in our standard benchmark. That’s especially impressive on this particular machine since OLED displays tend to be power-hungry. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks, and it’s worth noting that this machine’s OLED display provides a bit of an advantage, as OLED screens use less power to display the black bars around the video. (However, OLED displays also tend to be power-hungry). In our battery life benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 ran for an average of 1,401 minutes. That’s nearly 23 and a half hours. That’s far above what the recent AMD Ryzen AI 9-powered machines delivered. And it’s longer than the Snapdragon-powered Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge lasted when I tested it, although that machine had a smaller battery. With battery life numbers like these, it’s hard to criticize the performance! You’re making a trade-off and trading some multi-threaded performance for a big battery life bump. For many people, that will be well worth it. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360: Conclusion In PCWorld’s review of Intel Lunar Lake, we said Intel’s latest hardware delivers “great battery life, mediocre performance, [and] surprisingly decent gaming.” That’s exactly what you’re getting here, along with a very nice laptop body: An absolutely beautiful AMOLED display, a solid chassis with lots of metal, and a 2-in-1 experience with a touch screen plus an S Pen. I just wish the keyboard was a little more comfortable, with some more key travel and a tweaked layout. Still, for many people, this machine is exactly what the doctor ordered: A traditional Intel-powered laptop that can run x86 software with no compatibility concerns, incredibly long battery life, and even more graphics horsepower than you might expect. And day-to-day PC performance in web browsers, office applications, and typical productivity tools is perfectly fine! If you’re looking for more raw CPU performance, especially in multithreaded applications, a Lunar Lake machine like this one isn’t the right fit. You may want to check out a gaming laptop or something with AMD’s latest hardware. The price will be a little high for some people. This is designed to be a more premium laptop, and at $1,699 it’s priced like it. That’s on the high side for a laptop, but the package delivers: Long battery life, a big and beautiful OLED display, and a 2-in-1 experience with an included S Pen. (Many less expensive laptops don’t include a pen, even if they support one.) This machine provides a lot of value if that’s what you’re looking for. Read...

Network security sounds like something that would concern an IT manager at a big company, but even ordinary home users have good reasons not to leave their small home networks to the wind. It’s about stopping hackers and malware from getting in from the outside, but it’s also about stopping unauthorized people from getting into and snooping around your connected devices–not to mention giving all those devices the best possible protection as they browse the internet. In this guide, I’ll go through different aspects of network security and show you what you can do to increase your privacy and reduce the risk of hacks and malware, without making your life more complicated. Further reading: Solve your Wi-Fi problems with these smart router settings Securing your router In most homes, the router is both the central hub of the local network and the gateway between the network and the vast, wild internet. All traffic between connected devices and the internet or between two connected devices passes through the router. This means that the most important thing for a secure home network is a secure router, which neither lets unauthorized people in through weak passwords nor can be taken over by hackers or malware. Strong passwords Start by choosing a strong, unique password for your router’s admin interface. If possible, change the username on your router as well. If a vulnerability is discovered in the router that makes it easier to guess the right password, a unique username can still put an end to automated login attempts. Enable https and switch off telnet, ssh and remote login.Foundry Enable https for the admin interface If not already enabled, you should switch on https (encrypted connection) in the router settings. The setting for it is usually in the same place as the password. Without an encrypted connection, an unauthorized user on the local network can easily intercept your password and take control of the router. Change your Wi-Fi name and password Most routers come from the factory with a randomly chosen wireless network name and an equally random password. This can lull you into a false sense of security, thinking that’s enough. This is a mistake, as it has been shown many times over the years that these are not as random as they seem, and are easy to circumvent. The random network names (also called SSID) also reveal the manufacturer of your router, making it easier to target it with attacks. So switch to a unique network name (it also makes it easier to recognize your network if your neighbors have routers from the same manufacturer) and a long, secure password. I strongly recommend a password consisting of common, randomly chosen words. It’s much easier to type in by hand than a string of characters. Select wpa2 For connection security to the wireless network, it’s often possible to choose between different versions of the wpa protocol. Some routers are still pre-set to use wpa1 (usually just called wpa), but this is an outdated standard that is not completely secure. The vast majority of devices today support wpa2 or wpa3, so I recommend starting with wpa3 only. If you then find that any device in your home cannot connect to the network, you can go back to the router settings and change it to wpa2/wpa3. If that option is not available, you can choose wpa2 only. You may also want to activate a function called protected management frames if this option is available. Foundry Switch on the firewall Most routers have a built-in simple firewall. Check that it is switched on and enable it if it is not. Switch off unnecessary features Many routers come with a bunch of features that were once considered safe or needed for one reason or another, but are now unnecessary. Here are some features you should avoid. Hidden SSID Most routers have the ability to hide the Wi-Fi network, meaning it doesn’t show up as a possible network to connect to. The problem is that it is still very easy to find for those who really want to, and it only becomes more complicated for you and others who will use the network. Upnp Universal plug-and-play, or upnp, is an outdated technology for enabling access to network services from outside. It was not intended to be used to access things from the open internet, and it leaves your network vulnerable. Only switch it on if you later realize that something you really need requires the feature to be turned on. Wps Wi-Fi protected setup (aka wps) is also an outdated technology that was meant to make it easier to connect gadgets without a user interface, like printers, to the network. However, it has known security flaws and modern gadgets connect in other ways, such as with qr code. MAC filter All network devices have a hardware address, also known as a MAC address (not to be confused with Apple’s Mac computers). A MAC filter in the router means that devices whose MAC address you haven’t added won’t be allowed to connect. The only problem is that a hacker can easily clone one of your devices’ addresses to sneak past the filter, while making it much more complicated to connect new gadgets. Remote logging Some routers have a feature that allows you to log in and change settings by connecting from the internet to your home IP address. This is a bad idea and leaves you vulnerable. Foundry Use guest networks Many routers have a handy feature that creates a separate wireless network, often called a guest network. Devices connected to the guest network have access to the internet but cannot access your computer and other devices on the regular network. They cannot normally connect to each other either, although some manufacturers break this rule. Some routers allow you to create more than one guest network. You can use this to segment your network and protect your most important devices. For example, if you connect potentially insecure smart home products to a guest network, a hacked device will not give the hacker the opportunity to try to access your computer, mobile phone, or router. More advanced routers and routers on which you install alternative software such as Open WRT, allow you to create other types of segmented networks using a technology called vlan. For example, you can create a network for smart home devices that cannot access the internet, and then provide sufficient access to and from the regular network to control the devices with, for example, the smart home platform Home Assistant. More on this in a later guide! Foundry Encrypted dns for everyone on the network Most traffic between browsers and websites today is encrypted, so that only you and each website you connect to know what you are communicating about. But some internet traffic is still transparent–domain name lookups. For example, the DNS system translates www.pcforalla.se into an IP address. Your internet service provider has a DNS server to which the router normally forwards all domain name lookups. This means that the operator gets a lot of data about the websites you visit. By using encrypted DNS, you can protect yourself from this monitoring. The settings can look a bit different, but what you’re looking for is something called dns-over-tls (dot) or dns-over-https (doh). There are several major operators of encrypted dns, Cloudflare being the best known. Don’t forget to update Routers are some of the most vulnerable devices on the internet, and hackers are constantly hunting for vulnerabilities to be able to take over routers en masse and allow them to be part of botnets. If your router has a setting to automatically install firmware updates, I highly recommend turning it on. If not, you should set some kind of reminder to check for updates at least once a month. It’s also important to keep your connected gadgets up to date. Computers, mobiles, and tablets are easy to remember and they often show notifications alerting you to updates, but don’t forget other gadgets such as printers, televisions, and various smart home products. Fing Keep track of connected gadgets It can be a good idea to scan the network from time to time to see all connected devices. Even if you never detect any unauthorized devices, it can be useful, for example, by reminding you of gadgets you have that may need updating. Some routers have a built-in feature that displays all connected devices by name, IP address, and MAC address. If your router doesn’t have this, you can use a program on your computer such as Fing. Don’t be alarmed if you see devices that you don’t immediately recognize. Most connected gadgets choose strange device names. Fing can be a good choice here because the program can usually tell which manufacturer a device is from, making it easier to identify all devices. Simon Switch off your router when you’re away from home If you’re going to be away from home for more than a few days, it’s a good idea to switch off your router. This prevents outsiders from trying to get in, and devices in your home from communicating with the internet unnecessarily. An exception to this is if you have, for example, smart surveillance cameras that you want to be able to access from outside, or have a connected alarm of some kind (either for burglary or for water leaks, for example). Switch on additional security features in the router Many routers have additional security features that can help protect you and others connecting to that network. For example, Asus has features like AI Protect and Parental Control. Such features can, for example, analyze network traffic and block connections to known malicious sites, or block parts of the internet for certain devices (children, for example). As there are many different features that look different from one manufacturer to another, I can’t go through what’s available and what’s worth enabling on your particular router, but go through your router’s settings carefully and search for more info on a feature if you’re curious. Peggy & Marco Lachmann-Anke Protecting your accounts for connected gadgets Today, many connected devices in the home use manufacturer accounts for remote access, updates, and more. As long as these devices have access to the internet, these accounts pose a security risk. A hacker who gets into an account can spy on you–how much depends on the gadgets involved, the worst being connected cameras as the hacker can see (and record) everything that happens in front of the cameras. It is possible to use such gadgets without the internet, for example by only using them via Homekit or Home Assistant and placing them on a separate network where the firewall blocks the internet. If you don’t have the time or inclination to get involved, it’s important that you protect these accounts as best you can. Choose secure, unique passwords, enable two-factor authentication, or switch to key logins. This is not how it should look if you don’t run a website on a server in your home.Foundry Don’t open ports to the outside world In the past, it was common for applications to require others to contact them directly over the internet. For devices behind a router with address translation, this meant opening the router with port forwarding technology. This was the case for various file-sharing services, chat programs and games. For example, some Xbox games required port 3074 to be forwarded from the router to the game console. The website portforward.com lists thousands of games and programs and the ports they need. Modern programs and games have almost completely switched to other network technologies and do not need any open ports. Check your router’s port forwarding settings and remove any forwarding you no longer need. You can also test whether your router has any ports open to the outside world using, for example, Shields Up from renowned security researcher Steve Gibson. The site isn’t exactly intuitive, but click on “All Service Ports” at the bottom and it will check all the usual ports. A more advanced option is the nmap program, which you can use to scan your own router from the outside by first connecting to a VPN service. Read...

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise reveals new cybersecurity features for its OmniPCX Enterprise Purple solution, enhancing compliance with the EU`s NIS 2 Directive. Read...

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise reveals new cybersecurity features for its OmniPCX Enterprise Purple solution, enhancing compliance with the EU`s NIS 2 Directive. Read...

Other World Computing has unveiled the OWC Thunderbolt 5 Hub, set to enhance connectivity for Macs and PCs, priced at USD $189.99. Read...