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Some Home Routers More Secure Than Others

July 7, 2020

Most of us are still working from home during this coronavirus pandemic and using our home networks to conduct daily business. It is no secret that home networks are less secure than what we use at work. ZDNet posted the results of a study involving 127 home routers from seven brands that was done by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Communication (FKIE). The study found that 46 routers weren't updated in the past year and that many were still affected by hundreds of vulnerabilities. Vendors are also providing updates without fixing known vulnerabilities. This means applying an update doesn't necessarily mean your device is secure.

The FKIE study did show that Netgear and Asus do a better job of securing their routers than those models by TP-Link, Zyxel, D-Link or Linksys. About 90% of the routers use the Linux operating system but manufacturers aren't including fixes made available by the Linux kernel maintainers. It's a sad state of affairs for home router users. Apparently, applying recent updates may not help fix vulnerabilities. Obviously you should be vigilant about installing patches, but perhaps consider investigating business routers instead of consumer-grade home devices.

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