Securing

One of the reasons to use Home Assistant is that it’s not depending on cloud services. Even if you are only using Home Assistant in your local network, you should consider securing your instance.

Checklist

• Protect your web interface with a password
• Secure your host. Sources could be Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Security Guide, CIS Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Benchmark, or the Securing Debian Manual.
• Restrict network access to your device. Set PermitRootLogin no in your sshd config (usually /etc/ssh/sshd_config) and to use keys for authentication instead of passwords.
• Don’t run Home Assistant as root.
• Keep your secrets safe.

Additional points if you want to allow remote access:

• Protect your communication with TLS
• Protect your communication with Tor
• Use a proxy