Module 4: Your Devices and Your Home Network

60 minutes

Module 4: Your Devices and Your Home Network

Modules 1–3 secured your accounts, which live on other people’s computers. This module turns to the computers you can touch: your phone, your laptop, and the router blinking in the corner that nobody has thought about since the internet company installed it.

Good news up front: this is the least demanding module in the course. Device security in 2026 mostly means not turning off the protection your devices already ship with, plus a handful of settings you flip once. The manufacturers won this fight for you. Your job is to stop undoing their work.

The other thing this module does is clear away fog. Two of the most heavily marketed products in consumer security, VPNs and antivirus, get straight answers here — mechanism first, no product pitches. You’ll know what the padlock in your browser really promises, what a VPN fixes (less than the ads say), and whether you need antivirus at all (probably not, and you’ll understand why).

Six lessons:

  • The Boring Settings That Stop Real Attacks — updates, screen lock, find-my-device, and what disk encryption protects
  • Encryption in Transit, Plainly — the padlock, end-to-end versus provider-readable, and the straight VPN answer
  • Backups: The Layer That Forgives Mistakes — a personal 3-2-1 setup, and why an untested backup is only a hope
  • Do You Need Antivirus? — where infections come from in 2026, ending with a browser-extension audit
  • Your Wi-Fi Router — the five settings that matter on the box you never log into
  • The Router Quiz — find the right setting, choose the right security mode

What you’ll walk away with

  • Every device you own updating itself, locked, findable, and encrypted
  • One backup restore tested for real — the step that separates a backup from a wish
  • A browser-extension list you’ve read and pruned
  • A router checked against the five settings that matter

Time

About 60 minutes of lessons. The hands-on pieces (backup test, extension audit, router check) fit inside them.