Module 8 of StartCloud's Cyber Hygiene for Staff learning pathway, in five short units with a knowledge check: the home router nobody has updated since it was installed, keeping the work laptop for work and the family laptop for family, why the kids using your work machine is a genuine risk, printing and paper at home, and video calls where your screen or your house is on show.
Working From Home Without Bringing Work Home
The router nobody has touched since it arrived
Somewhere in your house there is a small box with blinking lights that has not been thought about since the day it was installed. Everything you do from home goes through it, including work, and it is the least maintained piece of technology most of us own.
The office router gets patched by somebody whose job that is. Yours does not, unless you do it. The good news is this is a one-off afternoon job with four parts, and then you can go back to ignoring it with a clear conscience.
Most routers ship with a default login that is printed in a manual anyone can download. That login is what lets someone change your settings, not just use your internet. Set a long passphrase instead, and if your router lets you rename the account from admin to something else, do that too.
The ACSC suggests changing the network name from the manufacturer's default and keeping anything identifying out of it, so it does not announce your surname, your unit number or the exact model of router you are running. The Wi-Fi password should be long and hard to guess, and it is fine to write it on the fridge.
Routers get security updates for a limited window, and the ACSC puts that window at roughly three to five years depending on the brand and model. If yours has not seen an update in years, or the manufacturer has stopped supporting it, replacing it is one of the cheapest security wins in the house.
Most routers have a guest Wi-Fi option sitting there unused. Put visitors, the smart TV, the doorbell camera and the kids' friends on it. It keeps the odds and ends separated from the network your work laptop is using, and it takes about five minutes to switch on.
Log in to the router and change the admin password. That is the one that matters most, because it is the difference between someone borrowing your internet and someone quietly rearranging your network. Your internet provider's support page will walk you through getting in, and there is no shame in ringing them.
The clearest rule in this whole module, and the one people quietly break most often: the work laptop is for work and the family laptop is for the family. Not because anybody in your house is untrustworthy, but because a work machine sits inside the business's systems, and everything that happens on it happens inside those systems too.
The kids doing homework on the work laptop
This is not fussiness and it is not about trust. A twelve year old chasing a free version of a game will click things an adult would not, and they are being targeted by people who know exactly how twelve year olds think. One installed extension, one dodgy download, and the machine holding your employer's email and client files is the machine it landed on.
- The work laptop is a work tool, like a company ute with the ladders on the roof
- A cheap family tablet or an old laptop solves this permanently
- If there is genuinely only one machine in the house, tell your manager and ask what to do
- Never let anyone else use your work login, however briefly
Doing work on the family computer because it is closer
The work laptop is upstairs on charge, the family desktop is right there, and you only need to send one quick email. The trouble is what gets left behind: the attachment saved to Downloads, the login sitting in the browser, the document in a folder nobody backs up. It is a slow leak rather than a bang, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed for years.
- Work files belong on work systems, not the family Downloads folder
- Do not save work passwords into a browser the whole household uses
- Webmail on a personal machine is still work data on a personal machine
- If you need proper access from home, ask IT for a proper way to get it
Lock it when you walk away, even at home
Home feels safe, so the screen stays open while you go and hang the washing out. Most of the time nothing happens. Occasionally a toddler sends eleven messages to a client, a housemate wanders past a payroll spreadsheet, or a tradie has a clear view of an open screen. Locking the screen costs a keystroke and removes all of it.
- Windows key and L on a PC, Control Command Q on a Mac
- Set the screen to lock itself after a few minutes as a backup
- Same rule at a cafe, and there the laptop goes with you, not the table
- Put the laptop away at the end of the day rather than leaving it open
Updates on a work laptop usually get pushed out by IT, and the only thing they need from you is a restart when it asks. Saying "remind me tomorrow" for three weeks straight is how a patched fleet ends up with one unpatched machine, and it is always the one sitting on someone's kitchen bench. Let it restart at lunch, and use your own home Wi-Fi rather than the neighbour's or the shopping centre's.
Paper is the part of working from home that nobody thinks about, and it is the easiest thing in the world to get wrong. At the office there are locked bins, a shredder and a general sense that documents belong to the business. At home there is a pile on the bench and a recycling bin on the verge.
None of this needs to be dramatic. It is mostly about where a page ends up once you have finished with it.
- Print at home only when you genuinely have to, and think first about whether a screen would do
- Collect it from the printer straight away, before it becomes part of the pile
- Store anything with client or staff details somewhere closed, not on the bench
- Shred it, or take it back to the office bin. Home recycling is a public document
- Do not use the back of an old client report as the kids' drawing paper
- Do not leave notes with passwords or client names stuck to the monitor
- Do not put confidential paper in the kerbside recycling bin
- Do not print a whole document when a photo of one page would do the job
Modern printers sit on your Wi-Fi, hold a memory of recent jobs, and get security updates about as often as your router does, which is to say almost never. Keep it on your own network rather than the guest one if the work laptop needs it, let it install updates when it offers, and if you ever sell or throw one out, wipe the settings first.
Working from home often means working from somewhere else entirely. The person behind you can read your screen, the person next to you can hear the client's name, and the laptop left guarding the table while you order is not really guarding anything. Sit with your back to a wall, keep the sensitive calls for somewhere quieter, and take the laptop with you.
Video calls put two things on display that used to stay private: your screen and your house. Neither is a disaster, and none of this is about having a tidy kitchen. It is about noticing what is in shot before other people do.
Sharing your entire desktop shares everything on it: the notification that pops up mid-sentence, the tab titles, the file names, the message from a colleague about the person on the call. Share the single window you actually mean to show, and close anything sensitive before you start.
Windows has Focus assist, macOS has Do Not Disturb, and both take a few seconds to switch on. It saves you from the private message that arrives on the big screen in front of a client, which is the sort of thing people remember for years.
A whiteboard with a client plan on it, a payslip on the fridge, the school pick-up note with your kid's name and school. A blurred background or a plain wall handles all of it, and it also means you are not showing the inside of your house to a room of people you have never met.
Check the participant list before saying anything confidential, because meeting links get forwarded and unfamiliar names show up. And remember your own room: a housemate on the couch can hear the whole conversation, and family are not covered by your confidentiality agreement.
Plenty of meetings are recorded or transcribed now, sometimes automatically. Assume anything said on a call could be read back later, and if a conversation genuinely needs to be off the record, say so at the start and ask for the recording to be stopped. That is a normal, professional thing to ask.
Working from home is a good thing, and none of this is an argument against it. It just moves a handful of responsibilities from the office, where somebody else was quietly handling them, to your spare room, where that somebody is now you. Four habits, one afternoon on the router, and you are in better shape than most.
- cyber.gov.au: Secure your Wi-Fi and router
- cyber.gov.au: Security tips for remote working
- cyber.gov.au: How to secure your devices
- scamwatch.gov.au: Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre
- idcare.org: IDCARE, free support if personal information has been exposed
Router settings vary a lot between brands, so your own manufacturer's support page is the place for the exact steps. Details were current at the time of writing (August 2026).
Knowledge check
5 quick questions. Get 4 right and the module is yours.
1. If you only do one thing to your home router, what should it be?
2. Your teenager wants to use your work laptop for a school assignment because theirs is slow. What is the right call?
3. You have finished with a printed client report at home. What do you do with it?
4. You are about to present a document on a video call with a client. What is the safest way to share?
5. Why does the guest Wi-Fi network on your router matter when you work from home?