When it comes to antivirus protection, many people already have it installed on their laptops and desktops. Where they don’t have it installed, though, are some of the devices that need it the most—their smartphones and smart devices.
Smartphones are one of the most likely to be infected by malware and, while you can add antivirus software to your phone, the same can’t be said for many of the devices in your home, such as Wi-Fi cameras, smart locks, thermostats, and more.
It’s not that devious minds out there are solely interested in hacking your thermostat to crank up the heat during the middle of the summer. No. What most want to do is find an entry point into your network.
That’s where the real damage happens.
How Malware, Viruses, and Phishing Can Affect You and Your Kids
Malware, which includes viruses and phishing, does more damage than just bricking your device or causing it to slow down. It can ruin lives.
In 2017, over 1,000,000 children had their identities stolen, and two-thirds of that group were younger than eight years old. The crimes caused approximately $2.6 billion in damage. This is on top of another $3 billion in damage that came from stolen credit card information, identity theft, and fraud.
All of it was caused by malicious phishing scams that tricked unsuspecting people into filling out fake forms or malware that spied on people and sole data and information from unprotected devices.
You might think that you’re smart enough to tell the difference between a legit site, email, or offer and a scam. And maybe you’re right. But threats are becoming smarter, better, and more rampant. Even if you are savvy enough to know how to identify a dangerous site or know when you’re being tricked, what you can’t do is keep up with all the millions of threats that are created each day.
On top of that, your devices might be compromised or infected right now without you even knowing it. This is what happened last year when cryptocurrency malware designed to harness the processing power of computers infected thousands of people last year undetected.
However, there’s something you can do about it, though, and it starts with your router.
Secure Home Platforms for Routers
SHPs work at the router level to add an extra punch of security to your Wi-Fi and your home. D-Link recently partnered with McAfee to provide their SHP on our currently available and upcoming routers.
Whereas traditional antivirus software works at the device level, McAfee’s SHP works through the cloud to identify threats before they reach your devices.
It uses machine learning to identify threats in real time, update its database, and apply those updates to its cloud-based service. So when it detects a threat on one side of the world and adds it to McAfee’s database, your home receives protection from it, too.
Shifting the security platform to your router extends that protection to every device on your Wi-Fi or Ethernet—even if those devices belong to friends and family who are on your network.
All of this is to say that one of the easiest ways to help keep malware, viruses, and more off your devices is to have a router with the protection already on board.
So, even if you’re not up to speed on everything that can sneak onto your devices, and even if you already have antivirus on most of your devices, you can add extra protection to every device in your home in a matter of minutes.