Hi everyone, I’ve been diving into securing my new Home Assistant installation and wanted to share my journey and some tips I’ve picked up along the way. Security is a big concern for me, especially since I want to access my HA setup remotely. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
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Duck DNS and Let’s Encrypt: I set up Duck DNS with Let’s Encrypt to create a secure HTTPS connection. It was a breeze to configure, and now I have a stable domain to access my HA instance. No more random port numbers!
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Port Forwarding: I created a port forwarding rule on my router to allow remote access. It works like a charm, but I’m always cautious about keeping my router’s firmware updated to minimize vulnerabilities.
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Terminal & SSH Add-on: I installed the Terminal & SSH add-on to have a terminal within the browser. At first, I was worried about security since it didn’t require a password. After some research, I learned that disabling remote SSH and only allowing local terminal access from within the browser is a safer approach. I set this up and feel much better about it now.
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Key-Pair Authentication: I explored generating a key-pair for SSH access but decided to leave the feature disabled for now. It’s a bit over my head as a newbie, but I hope to set it up properly in the future.
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Regular Updates: I make it a point to keep all my add-ons and core components updated. Security patches are crucial, and I don’t want to be caught off guard with an outdated system.
If anyone has additional tips or best practices for securing remote access, I’d love to hear them! It’s been a learning curve, but I feel more confident with each step I take. 