Why You Shouldn’t Use Consumer Grade Routers on a Business Network

Table of Contents

When it comes to your business, you know it’s powered through the network it’s on. Without it, you and your business employees would constantly have to deal with fighting security breaches and IT downtime. You already put a lot of investment into your business networks. When you use consumer-grade routers on important business networks, it impacts your business negatively, creates a headache to deal with, and ultimately, undermines all the important work you’ve already put into the health and strength of the network. Consumer grade routers are not inherently harmful or bad but they should not be taken outside of their intended use. They are not meant for business networks and can bring a host of potential issues and problems with them if they are used in such an environment.

consumer based router linked to a building

Potential Security Issues

Consumer grade routers are for the average home user. They are not completely unprotected, but the cybersecurity present on these routers are not strong enough to protect the sensitive and important information that your business network needs. Security is an important part of any business and consumer grade routers certainly don’t provide the adequate amount of protection that a business needs.

Just last year, VPNFilter brought havoc on many home routers. This malware effectively stole data by intercepting information from the router. This is an invasive breach of privacy that can be extremely costly for any business, especially when sensitive data is taken into the wrong hands. Not only does this mean IT downtime, it means spending money to replace damaged equipment, investing into a new router, and having to account for any lost or stolen data.


Reliability

Consumer grade routers are meant and built for casual use. Gaming, internet, streaming, and conducting an average amount of work at home are all great for consumer grade routers. Businesses, however, require a router that can handle both security and lots of connections at once. Your business will have multiple people connected all conducting high demand work in order to do their jobs. A consumer grade router is not able to handle those many connections and run that many actions concurrently. This will lead to a slow internet connection which is a source of frustration for both you and employees.

unhappy woman trying to connect laptop to router

Support and Features

Since consumer grade routers are not built for business use and thus inherently do not have many of the features that are commonly associated with business class routers. Amenities such as VPN, VLAN, and much more can be utilized and improve quality of life for everyone connected. Businesses also need business-minded solutions, consumer grade routers do not have the support capabilities needed to troubleshoot or make any needed maintenance checkups or repairs for your business.


Benefits of Using Proper Routers

Your business network should have the best router for the job. Business optimized routers improve filtering, has superior hardware to handle the workloads of day to day operations, and constantly providing updates and support should there be any issues. On the security side of things, enterprise routers will be able to isolate any potential malware infections so they don’t cause trouble to all systems and section off any potentially infected device to halt the spread of malware. Consumer routers do not offer any of these benefits and if they do, they are not good enough to handle major threats that businesses are faced with every day.

happy people linking to router at their office building

A good router meant for a business network should be considered an investment and not an expense. Consumer grade routers should be left to where they excel best, at the home. Using them at work means more stress for IT professionals and for the business as a whole. Utilizing the proper router for the job allows you to properly strengthen your network and ensure that strength will hold up over the time of the network. Using a consumer-grade router to cut corners on costs will only have your business end up giving up more of its manpower and expenses in the long run. Having a proactive approach towards which router to invest in for your business network will positively affect your business as a whole.

 

Is your IT the best it can be?

Categories: Security, Network Security

blogs related to this

Malware and Ransomware Protection for Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

Malware and Ransomware Protection for Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

Malware has been around for quite a few years, and it continues to bring businesses down to their knees. Ransomware, in particular, was a nuisance...

Printer Security Risks and How to Mitigate Them

Printer Security Risks and How to Mitigate Them

Printers may appear to be low-maintenance and relatively safe devices. However, printers are a common attack vector used by cybercriminals to gain...

Managed IT Services vs In-House IT: Which is Right for Your Business?

Managed IT Services vs In-House IT: Which is Right for Your Business?

Information Technology (IT) is the most important pillar in an organization's architecture. The quality of an enterprise's IT ecosystem will largely...

DNS Hijacking: What it is and How to Protect Your Business

DNS Hijacking: What it is and How to Protect Your Business

A Domain Name System (DNS) is essential to all companies that depend on the internet to generate sales—it is a crucial element to the performance and...

Can Your Business Recover Data after a Ransomware Attack?

Can Your Business Recover Data after a Ransomware Attack?

In a highly digitized world, businesses face an increasingly sophisticated range of cybersecurity threats. As such, it's safe to say that ransomware...

What is Threat Intelligence Sharing?

What is Threat Intelligence Sharing?

The world is rife with cybercrime. Enterprises constantly battle an evolving array of threat actors to protect massive digital vaults of sensitive...

Optimizing Your Print Environment with a Professional Print Assessment and Analysis

Optimizing Your Print Environment with a Professional Print Assessment and Analysis

How many pages does your company print each week? What are your current print costs? What's the total cost of ownership? Are your reactive processes...