Garage doors are a common entry point for burglars. With the right tools, they can easily break into your home or business and steal your belongings.
Thankfully, there are steps you can take to prevent hackers from compromising your garage door security system. By following these tips, you can keep your home safe from any unwanted intruders.
understand the risks
Before you can prevent your garage door from being hacked, you must understand what it is and how it works. A garage door hack is an attack in which a malicious actor uses a specialized tool to gain access to your home or business through its automatic garage door opener.
Hackers can bypass security systems by manipulating certain aspects, such as wireless signals and physical locking systems. Once they gain access, they can steal items from within your home or business.
Here are some of the most common ways to hack a garage door:
Wireless Signal Capture – Hackers can use devices called code grabbers to capture the signal that goes off when you press your garage door remote. This allows them to easily repeat the signal and open your garage door. Fortunately, since the early 2000s, most manufacturers of garage door openers have been using "rolling code" techniques to combat this hack. With rolling codes, each code you use when you press the remote will only work once and won't open the door a second time, rendering any code thief useless. The next code to use is randomly chosen from 100 million possible codes, so thieves can't break in. If you have a garage door opener manufactured before 2003, it is highly recommended that you replace it with a new one to eliminate this problem.
Physical Access Point Attacks – By law, all garage door openers have an emergency release cord that you can pull to easily disconnect the door from the electric opener, so you can protect yourself in the event of a power outage or garage door opener failure lift the door manually. Unfortunately, thieves often use a coat hanger to fish between the top weatherstripping and the garage door to hang on to the emergency release cord and pull on it. This only takes a few seconds, and once it's done, a thief can easily lift the door open with his hands from the outside. Concerned homeowners have been known to disable emergency releases, but unfortunately, this is against the law. If there was an emergency (like a fire) and someone was trapped in the garage, they would have nowhere to go. If someone dies under these circumstances, the resulting liability can be enormous and insurance may deny coverage.
Protect Your Garage Door
One of the best ways to prevent hacking is to install a comprehensive security system with motion sensors, cameras and sirens. This will help deter intruders from even trying to break into your garage door. By taking this proactive step, you can significantly reduce the risk of intruders trying to break your garage door. The presence of a strong security system is usually enough to deter potential intruders, giving you peace of mind knowing your property is well protected.
monitor your garage door
Regular monitoring of your garage door is essential if you want to prevent garage door hacking from happening. Many newer garage door openers offer wifi capability. Wifi Opener allows you to download the manufacturer's apps from the Apple Store and Google Play Store onto your phone or tablet. Once installed and connected to your wifi network, you can monitor your garage door from anywhere in the world as long as you have a wifi connection. You can open and close your door remotely, and you can set the app to send you an alert when the door opens.
