You probably have antivirus and
anti-malware software protecting your Mac or PC. And you probably curse every
time you’re prompted to download and install the latest updates, or are
reminded to scan your hard drive—especially if you have more than one computer
on your network. What about your household’s smartphones and tablets? Have you
installed similar protection on them? What’s protecting your home-security
cameras from online attack? Your smart TV? Your connected thermostat?
My smart home has more than 40 devices
connected to the Internet: Multiple computers, tablets, and smartphones; 10 IP
security cameras; a control panel for my Vivint home-security and automation
system; a satellite TV tuner with a DVR; a Roku video-streaming box; four Sonos
nodes; and more. Bitdefender tells me its Box can protect all of them, and with
enough confidence that I can run my PCs, tablets, and smartphones without local
antivirus or anti-malware. All I need besides Box is a lightweight agent on
those devices (Windows, Mac OS, Android, and iOS are all supported).
The ability to identify vulnerable software on your network PCs is one of
Box's best features.
I installed Box about two weeks ago,
while the device was available only to customers who pre-ordered it. It goes on
sale Thursday to anyone who wants to buy one. While I have no complaints about
its ability to protect my devices, the experience hasn’t been anywhere near as
trouble-free as I would expect a tech product to be when it's ostensibly
designed for non-techies.
Good idea
The concept of Box is
very smart. It’s similar to a hardware firewall in that it prevents
unauthorized access to your home network without inhibiting outbound traffic
to the Internet, but it also provides antivirus and anti-malware protection via
the cloud for every device on your network.
Install the Box agent on your laptops,
smartphones and tablets, and they will be protected even when they’re out in
the wild connecting to the most dubious of Wi-Fi hotspots, according to
Bitdefender.
Troubled
execution
My own rather complicated network setup
was one Bitdefender didn’t account for. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I
quickly realized all I needed to do was set up Box the same way I did my Wi-Fi
router. Box can operate as a stand-alone 802.11n Wi-Fi router, too, but I
wouldn’t recommend using it that way.
The bigger problem is that Box just
isn’t a very good DHCP server. For starters, it won’t allow
you to reserve IP addresses for the devices on your network. Reaching a device
from outside your network is a lot easier when you know its internal IP
address, and a lot harder if you can’t predict what its IP address will be if a
power interruption—be it from a power outage or unplugging the device (or Box)
to move or reset it—causes the DHCP server to rebuild its routing table from
scratch.
The other problem I encountered was
getting Box’s DHCP server to reliably assign internal IP addresses in the first
place. Bitdefender’s tech support says the problem I encountered was due to the
client devices' not requesting new IP addresses, but I repeatedly encountered
issues where I lost access to cameras, Wi-Fi access points, and what-have-you
after doing something as simple as unplugging Box. They worked, and then they
didn’t.
Bitdefender says it's not marketing this
device to network enthusiasts, but I pity the company's poor tech-support
people helping network neophytes figure out why their networks are suddenly not
working as expected.
Over-reliance
on apps
The only means of interacting with Box
is to install an app on your smartphone or tablet. The agent you install on Mac
or PC clients has no user interface, and there is no web app or portal
available (Bitdefender says building one isn’t on its immediate roadmap).
Far too many devices get labeled simply "New device" during Box's
discovery scan.
I installed the Android app on my HTC
One M7 and the iOS app on an iPad. Using the Android app bugged me because my
phone’s display kept timing out, and the iOS version drove me crazy for a whole
other reason: I use my iPad in landscape mode because it’s in a keyboard dock,
but the app can’t rotate out of portrait mode.
When you install it, Box will scan your
network and attempt to identify all the devices connected to it. Unfortunately,
it’s pretty lousy at this task, too. It labeled the vast majority of the
clients on my network as “New device,” with no other information at all.
Within the app, everything gets assigned
to one of two categories: Family or Guest. You can assign an Internet
speed—low, normal, or high—to each device no matter which category it’s in. So
you might assign a Roku box high speed to ensure you have a great streaming
experience, while something like a NAS box that’s primarily used only on your
local network gets shunted down to low speed. But it’s hard to decide what’s
appropriate if you don’t know what the device is in the first place.
Be prepared to see a lot of unnecessarily alarming messages from Box.
If you’re willing to blindly assign a
device to the Family category, the app will at least display that device’s MAC
address (that’s an unchanging alpha-numeric identifier unique to that piece of
gear). So if you’ve documented the MAC addresses for all your network clients
(that’s been on my personal to-do list for years now), you should be able to
figure out exactly what it is and what its Internet speed should be. At that
point, you can assign it a more meaningful name, too.
Back on the negative side, the app
relentlessly floods you with alarms about supposedly dangerous attacks that
it’s prevented. The tone of the messages is guaranteed to scare the pants off
less-experienced users. In the two weeks I used Box, I received almost 70
messages that read: “Dangerous website: This website was blocked to prevent a
malware from reaching your device. Malware can cause your device to slow down
or it can steal your private information.” Those were all in relation to my
company-issued laptop, so rest assured I don’t routinely visit unsavory
websites on that machine.
It’s not all
bad, but it’s not worth buying—yet
On the bright side, the app enables you
to perform limited management functions on the PCs where the Box agent
installed. The app will examine your passwords and let you know if they’re
weak, strong, or missing; it will let you know when OS updates are available;
and it will notify you when the machine is vulnerable due to outdated software
such as Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader. That’s smart. So is the ability to
remotely clean up the computer’s hard drive, removing clutter from temporary
files and such.
Enable Box local protection and you can
uninstall any other antivirus or anti-malware software you’ve been running,
freeing up resources for other programs. It will also protect you from
malicious software that might be present on USB sticks, external hard drives,
or other storage media that you plug in. Local protection is available for
Windows, Mac OS, and Android devices.
Price of admission: $199 for Box, plus
$99 for an annual subscription (after the first year). If you’re paying for
antivirus and antimalware software now, that’s pretty reasonable for protecting
an unlimited number of devices. But if you need protection only for computers,
there are plenty of free and equally effective alternatives available.
I like what Bitdefender is trying to do
with Box, but I’ll be disentangling it from my home network until the company
irons out more of the kinks. I will revisit it in a few months to see how much
progress they’ve made, and I’ll update this review at that time.
This story, "Bitdefender Box
review: Trying hard to be antivirus for the Internet of Things" was
originally published by TechHive.
(source: pcworld.com)
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