This Small Box Can Protect Your Entire Home from Malware Automatically

Bitdefender sent me their latest security hardware called the new Bitdefender BOX. Apparently, it’s a device you can plug into your home router and it’ll magically protect all the devices connected to the network from viruses, malware, and any other type of nasty electronic attack.

Sounds like a neat concept frankly and thankfully the BOX itself looks pretty cool too so I figured I’d check it out and see how well it did.

What is the Bitdefender BOX?

The Bitdefender BOX plugs in via ethernet to your router or modem you currently have or can act as a router itself. Anything connected to that network is then constantly monitored by the BOX’s system in the following ways:

• Web Scanning: It scans every site each device on the network visits to make sure they aren’t listed in a malicious database and then if it is, block access to it.
• Vulnerability Assessment: You can have the BOX scan a specific device for vulnerabilities. Things like weak credentials, outdated firmware, etc. and it’ll notify you of how you can fix these things.
• Device Detection: The BOX detects new devices on the network and notifies you if you would like to allow them access.
• Exploit Prevention: Similar to other malware prevention solutions it uses signatures to check for exploits.
• Anomaly Detection: Using machine learning apparently, it can recognize normal network behavior for devices on the network and then alert you if there is any difference in that behavior potentially indicating a threat.
• Brute Force Protection: It can stop brute force authentication on any device connected to the network.
• Sensitive Data Protection: It can block any attempts to send credit card info over non-secured connections.

It supposedly also can protect your IoT devices from attacks (something that is becoming more common and is an issue since IoT devices don’t usually have their own security, sadly.

Setting Up the BOX

The BOX is easy enough to set up thanks to the fact it can all be done using an app.

You simply plug it into the ethernet port of your router then plug it into the wall and wait for the light on the front of it to spin indicating it’s ready to be setup.

Then download the Bitdefender Central app on your phone and open it.

Next, sign up for a free account and log in.

Then select Set up Bitdefender BOX.

And you’ll follow the steps from there. At some point you just have to decide if you want to use the BOX as it’s own router (good if you have a modem/router combo from your ISP) or if you have your own router you can (thankfully) just plug the BOX in between the router and modem to have it be a bridge in between the two (it shows you how to do all of this in the app and it’s pretty easy).

After that, it’ll begin scanning and finding all of the devices on the network and it’s all set.

How Does It Do?

Network Performance

So my first concern with the BOX is that since it is taking over my wifi network and replacing my router does it support my gigabit internet speeds. So I did a speed test while connected to the BOX.

Network Protection

Next, I used a site called Shield’s up to see how well it was protecting the ports on my network.

Conclusion

Now, it’s hard to really test for all the things Bitdefender claims for the device to do (short of hiring a hacker to hack my own network) but so far seems like it does what it’s advertising: better internet protection without any software needing to be installed or anything needing to be done really, and it thankfully didn’t affect my internet speeds (something of which I am very invested in).

Overall though, if you’re worried about security on your network and want a super easy way to just protect everything on the network at once without having to manually install software on each device you have as well as protect your IoT devices, comes with Bitdefender Total Security (their software solution) for free as well, and a VPN service to hide your traffic over the internet if you want, the Bitdefender BOX is definitely an option.

It costs $199 from Amazon here if you want to check it out further. Let me know what you guys think of the concept of this hardware anti-virus versus software-only solutions.

Allied Content: This article was sponsored by BitDefender (but it is something I thought was interesting to talk about or I wouldn’t have done it and all opinions herein are my own. Hope you enjoyed it!)