Staying secure in the Smart Era with the Plume’s HomePass: Guard

Staying secure in the Smart Era with the help of Plume’s Home Pass: Guard

We are right in the middle of the smart era. Everything around us is continuously getting smarter, from our phones, wrist watches, and increasingly devices in our homes. Smart tech is now a part of our everyday lives. The term "smart" originally comes from the acronym "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology" but has become widely known as "smart" because of the notion of allowing previously inanimate objects—to watch, learn and communicate with us. Smart technology has innumerable benefits ranging from convenience, controlling your home's thermostat, lights, and even locks right from your phone, to sustainability and efficiency, optimizing and automating power usage. Unfortunately, while our homes are getting smarter, hackers are also getting smarter, and with every new device on your network, there is another avenue to hack into.

Possible scenarios of how your home IoT devices could be compromised:

• A hacker gains access to your smart home thermostat or even coffee maker, gaining the ability to know when you might be out of the house.
• A hacker gains access to a smart home speaker with listening capabilities, listening in to your conversations or accessing passwords and user data.

Luckily, All West’s managed Wi-Fi system Plume, has introduced the latest feature of the HomePass app: Guard: Advanced IoT Protect. This feature protects vulnerable IoT (Internet of Things) devices, such as thermostats, lights, speakers, doorbells, locks and bolts, baby monitors, coffee machines, and many more. While, smart devices like these can improve our daily lives, they need to be properly protected to prevent a security breach, compromising your home’s safety, and privacy.

Plume’s advanced IoT protection works smarter not harder. Traditional antivirus solutions are installed on each of our devices like our phones and computers but more technologies are replaced by IoT devices, making it impossible to stay up to date with antivirus software on each of our devices, furthermore, most of these devices do not have the computing abilities to install antivirus agents. Plume’s HomePass: Guard automatically and continuously protects every device on your network by sitting at the gate: the router. Plume utilizes artificial intelligence and cloud powered machine learning algorithms to determine what is normal behavior for your IoT devices. This system will immediately flag suspicious activity and quarantine the infected device to prevent any other devices from being compromised.

When an IoT device behaves abnormally, you will be immediately notified through the HomePass app and guided through the appropriate measures to take. The most common way you will interface with the Guard suite will be while browsing you may receive an “access blocked” message on a potentially malicious website. You can view an active timeline of Guard’s protection efforts in the HomePass app at the device, user, or home level.When an IoT device behaves abnormally, you will be immediately notified through the HomePass app and guided through the appropriate measures to take. The most common way you will interface with the Guard suite will be while browsing you may receive an “access blocked” message on a potentially malicious website. You can view an active timeline of Guard’s protection efforts in the HomePass app at the device, user, or home level.

For more tips on how to protect your home from cyber threats click here.

Do you still have questions about your wi-fi security? Talk to one of our experts to make sure you are protected at 866.255.9378 or email help@allwest.com.