How to protect a NAS behind a wireless router?

[soupcxan]

I just installed a new Synology DS212j NAS behind an old Belkin F5D7230-4 wireless router (probably from 2006) on my home network. The wifi network uses WPA-TKIP with a strong password but otherwise has no security. The NAS is connected to the router with cat5. The NAS is setup with a couple password-protected shares (accounts setup on the NAS) that the Windows 7 PCs on the wifi network can access.

Since the NAS and router will be on 24/7, what else do I need to do to ensure that the NAS is secure?

I searched the FAQs but didn't see anything directly on this topic. Thanks.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Well..your NAS is behind the NAT firewall of your router...so unless you DMZ'd it or did lots of port forwarding to it, nobody from the internet can come in and poke around on it.

Most NAS devices have a web access portal to access files remotely...typically done via port 80 and/or port 443. If you port forwarded that..if you have a choice, use 443 only. And have user account names with good passwords. Have a complicated admin password.

Regarding the inside of your network...why not update/upgrade your wireless security to WPA2 ? It's more secure, and it has less overhead (thus better performance).

And don't forget to backup the data on the NAS.

 

[soupcxan]

Thanks Stonecat. I don't use DMZ or have any ports forwarded on the router so should that should be safe.

Not sure if I have WPA2 turned on or not, but I'll check and enable it if not.

My plan for the NAS is: each of the two hard drives will be a separate share (no RAID). The data that I want to preserve will be manually duplicated on each drive. The rest of the disk space will be available for media files that I don't need to backup (some will reside on disk 1 and some on disk 2). So if one drive fails, I'll still have a copy of the critical data on the other drive. I guess this doesn't protect me if the Synology itself fails, but I assume that I could just take the disks out and pop them into a USB dock (since they are not formatted with RAID or anything wierd).

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I guess this doesn't protect me if the Synology itself fails, but I assume that I could just take the disks out and pop them into a USB dock (since they are not formatted with RAID or anything wierd).

assuming that something like a surge doesn't come through and blow the whole unit..including the HDDs.

Maybe pickup an APC 550 or something to run it off and lessen the chance of a surge hittin' her.