Cujo Smart Firewall

[Spudz]

Today I received an email from CEPro about this device.. See link below...

preview

Until today I had never heard of this device. It appears to have won best security solution at CEDIA 2017 last month. I checked and I see it on Amazon and it has 614 mostly 5 star reviews. Clearly it is a device that a lot of people like. Is this an option for DIY customers who don't know how to setup a VPN etc? Would a device like this have done anything for the Hikvision or Dahua backdoors/hacking that have come to light recently? Just curious as I didn't see anything on this forum about this device.. Interest to know what others think about it..

https://www.getcujo.com/cedia2017/

Amazon reviews..

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSEX7PT?aaxitk=NSeC.PH23gxlsKvokmw0AQ

 

[Mike A.]

Besides a bunch of more technical issues, it runs on a subscription model @ $8.99/month and currently no VPN.

I've watched these home security appliances for a long time and I've still not really seen "the one" yet. There are various other devices like it and something good along those lines as a plug-n-play device is coming eventually, but don't think that this is it. The problem with all of these will be that while just running as a firewall and blocking sites and providing parental controls, etc., and having some "cloud"-based review/continual update for someone who's clueless is relatively easy, the exceptions quickly become a lot more complex. This isn't doing anything that you can't do with a good router/firewall, it's just putting a more simple face on it and/or making some judgement and/or prompting you in a more "friendly" way. So beyond that level you then you either need to know enough to handle those kinds of things and have it provide some way to access more advanced functions at a specific level (which a lot don't since the intent is to hide all of that from the user in an Apple-type way) or rely on it to manage that in some abstracted way. The way that the latter tends to be done usually is similar to the old ZoneAlarm-type desktop firewalls where it will throw up a prompt saying "Hey, I see this... Should I do this?" The user then, wanting to do whatever it is, say let their cameras work, says "Sure do that!" And they've then bypassed the security provided. After a while every time that they can't do something they're hitting OK and bypassing the whole purpose of having the thing. ; ) And/or getting false positives and being unnecessarily alarmed and frustrated, or inadvertently blocking stuff that they want to work, or dealing with problems caused by the device itself, and so on...

There needs to be an entirely different model for doing this vs just making a cute firewall device with a friendly face. I'm not sure what that is. If I did I'd be doing that and preparing to be rich.

 

[cameraman27]

While these will benefit many users, I think that pfsense has evolved so much recently and anyone with the knowledge to mess with router settings (again, not everyone) should look into setting up a pfsense box.