Cybercriminals are hungry beasts, feasting on the worldwide internet. Based on data from Statista, “As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide – 59.5 percent of the global population.” That’s a lot of potential targets. Given these numbers, and the ever-renewed attempts to exploit them, it’s imperative that your devices, privacy, data, and family are safe from malicious threats, whether you’re inside or outside the premises of your home. Just how do you do that?

Protecting the Connected Consumer at Home 

Securing your devices, privacy, data, and family in your home can easily be enforced using a comprehensive antivirus application such as Trend Micro Maximum Security. It detects and blocks malware such as ransomware, thwarts fileless attacks, intercepts dubious websites, prevents invasion of your privacy and theft of your identity and data, and at the same time helps you to manage how and when your household uses the web and programs in their respective computers.

Trend Micro Maximum Security ensures a more secure online experience through its extensive range of safety features:

• Folder Shield: Add an extra layer of ransomware protection by limiting access to files within the protected folders and across multiple user accounts, thereby preventing ransomware from maliciously encrypting your files.
• Email Defender: Scans and detects fraudulent email content sent to Gmail and Outlook.com to protect you against scams, phishing, and suspicious emails.
• Social Network Security: Proactively indicates the safety of links found on leading social networking sites and blocking links that lead to malicious sites.
• Social Media Privacy Protection: Checks the Privacy Settings of your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, securing your privacy on social media.
• On-Demand Link Scan: Instantly checks the safety of links in web pages as you hover your mouse them, so you’re forewarned before you click.
• Remote File Lock: Allows the user to remotely lock files if your computer is lost or stolen, thus protecting your data from prying eyes.

To further enhance the protection of your devices at home—and the members of your household—your home network needs to be safeguarded as well. Trend Micro Home Network Security is an easy-to-use security solution that can help shield all the devices in your home against security threats.

Trend Micro Home Network Security (HNS) station connects to your home Wi-Fi router. Once activated, it scans all traffic passing in and out of your home network, prevents intrusions, blocks hacking attempts and web threats, and helps to protect your household member’s privacy.

The following features heighten your home network protection and maximize user convenience:

• AI Security System: HNS utilizes Trend Micro’s Smart Protection Network (SPN) to protect all your smart devices at home from a wide range of threats, including network attacks and intrusions, malicious websites and files, default or weak passwords on your network devices, intranet or internet-based malicious behavior, system vulnerabilities, and privacy and network access violations.
• Advanced Vulnerability Detection: The HNS Device Scan assesses connected devices for high-severity vulnerabilities that have been exploited in the wild. Once a vulnerability is detected, HNS provides users with guidance on how to address the vulnerability.
• Voice Control: Uses Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice control to execute commands through your smart speakers to perform specific Trend Micro Home Network Security functions.
• Early Access Program: Lets you try the latest security protection under development for your home network and devices. Early Access features include:
  • Router Access Protection: Helps prevent hackers from gaining control of your router and making changes to important settings, which can leave your network and devices vulnerable. With this feature enabled, all attempts to log in to your router will be blocked unless approved.
  • Smart Alert:  Employs machine learning to understand the normal behavior of a device and then informs you if your devices are behaving unusually.
  • Cyberattack Shield: Deploys in real-time an emergency security policy from the cloud to your network when there’s a global threat outbreak to prevent further spreading of threats like ransomware and botnets.
  • Ad Block: Blocks ads on all devices, with the added benefit of faster load times for some sites.
• Parental Controls: Sets time limits on game consoles. Blocks access during homework and family time. Prevents mature content from reaching the screens of the underage members of the household. And monitors their online activities, so you can teach them how to use the Internet safely.
• Device Management Anywhere: Provides an easy-to-use, real-time smartphone app that customizes internet access for family and guests; grants or blocks access to new computers, phones, tablets, or smart home devices entering your network; and manages access for all the connected devices in your home—such as smart speakers, security cameras, smart TVs, mobile phones, and even smart home devices like lights and door locks. Finally, it reports the security status of your devices and home network in real-time.

Protecting the Connected Consumer On-The-Go

Keeping the connected consumer safe means extending security beyond the home. As such, Trend Micro also provides essential protection for your mobile devices, privacy, and data when you’re outside the protection of your home.

Trend Micro Mobile Security for Android protects you against malicious apps, ransomware, dangerous websites, unsafe Wi-Fi networks, unwanted access to your device, and more. It also helps to optimize your mobile phone to keep it running at peak performance.

Trend Micro Mobile Security for iOS automatically blocks potentially harmful websites while browsing. In addition, it blocks ads, personal information trackers and helps you to avoid unsafe Wi-Fi networks and excess data usage.

Trend Micro Password Manager, available for Android and iOS (as well as PCs and Macs), allows you to manage all of your account names, website passwords, and other credentials in a single secure system from any location, on any device, protecting your data and privacy while you’re doing mobile transactions.

Trend Micro Trend Micro VPN on Android and iOS, turns any public hotspot into a secure WiFi Virtual Private Network (VPN), encrypting your data in transit to the internet, to keep your information safe from hackers.

Trend Micro ID Security, on Android and iOS, is designed to help monitor your personal identity data if it’s leaked to the dark web and alerts you if any of your personal data is being maliciously sold or distributed by cyber criminals there. It also checks if a password you’ve used is currently in circulation on the dark web.

Trend Micro Guardian for Android and iOS integrates with Trend Micro’s Home Network Security parental control rules via Mobile Device Management technology to extend the rules you’ve applied on your home network to your children’s Wi-Fi / mobile connections.

In summary, it’s crucial to stay secure no matter where you are or what you’re doing. To maximize your online security, you need a comprehensive multi-layered solution across all your devices, both inside and outside the home, to maintain your digital privacy and safety. Trend Micro has got you covered.

Stay tuned next week for Connected Consumer Security: Part 3 – Cybersecurity Habits to Stay Safe.