After interviewing Yossi Atias, co-founder and CEO of Dojo, Safety Detective’s Aviva Zacks decided she had to own a Dojo by BullGuard. This product is the next best thing in home security, and here’s why you need one.
Safety Detective: How did you get the idea for Dojo?
Yossi Atias: I’ve been in the network and security business for a long time. My startup, which was eventually acquired by BullGuard, started from a personal experience. About five years ago, I came home and saw my daughter had put an adhesive bandage on her laptop’s camera. I asked her why, and she told me that a classmate’s father had given them a lecture on how to be safe on the Internet. He had told them that the only way to make sure that no one is really watching you is just to cover the camera. And that is how we came up with the Dojo product, which provides managed security for all connected devices at home.
SD: How can Dojo help people stay secure in the new IoT world?
YA: IoT security is a relatively new domain that is growing very quickly. If you buy a TV today, it will be a smart TV that is connected to the Internet. Many homes are becoming fully connected with smart devices such as surveillance cameras, baby monitors, and refrigerators, and they are all at a high security risk.
IoT and connected devices have started to get more exposure and visibility, and it is obvious to me that these are very unsafe devices, cybersecurity-wise. Expecting consumers to be able to protect themselves or build their own solution is not realistic. It’s too complex and many of them are not even aware of the privacy risks that are associated with having a device with a camera or a microphone that can gather a lot of information about you.
SD: How does Dojo work?
YA: Dojo is a technology that we offer to CSPs (communication services providers). We offer them the technology that is integrated into the Wi-Fi routers provided by CSPs to their customers and protects everything that is connected to your home network . That means any device—PC, smartphone, or IoT device—that is connected to the home network has a high-grade suite of cybersecurity features. This makes sure that the device, even with its built-in vulnerabilities, isn’t compromised by bad actors and protects the user’s privacy. For example, if you have a baby monitor, you want to make sure that you’re the only one, and not any unwanted guests, watching your kids. Our system can detect all those scenarios, alerting the user with the mobile app and blocking the malicious actor in real time.
Usually with an IoT device, you cannot deploy any end-point security. So, the only way to protect those devices is by providing network-based security, which is coming from the enterprise high-end system domain. The technology we’re using is heavily reliant on machine learning, which means that it constantly analyzes the behavior of those devices and detects anomalies in their behavior that help us understand that something is going wrong with the device.
We also have a wide range of features including smart-manage firewall, intrusion detection system, and parental control, all integrated into one seamless experience to the end-user. So, the end-user doesn’t really need to understand anything about this technology. You just need the mobile app that will show you what’s going on in your home network.
When you start the service for the first time, a WiFi router with Dojo technology automatically discovers all your network-connected devices. You can add as many virtual users as you want at home, and you can apply different policies to your kids’ usernames, whether content or internet usage. For example, you can decide that you want to block one of the kids every day from 2:00 to 4:00 PM from accessing the Internet because it’s homework time.
SD: People are setting up their homes with so many smart devices and they have no idea how vulnerable they are, and this really protects the whole home.
YA: That was the idea because we understood that the complexity of managing your network’s security, even if you have the security gear, can be too difficult. The idea for us was how to bring high-end security features and make them accessible for every consumer in a very low cost and simple manner.
If you suddenly see a new device in your list, you can be on top of it. The ability to see what’s connected and how it’s behaving gives you a pretty good understanding of what’s going on with your home network without any need for cyber security knowledge.
SD: How do you see your company developing in the next five years?
YA: If you look into the future—5, 10, 15 years from now, when people will have a fully automated smart home—everything will be computer controlled. We are pro IoT technology, but only if it’s safe. IoT and smart home technology makes everyone’s life easier, but the risk is that you get dependent on that and if it is compromised, the damage is significant. The more our lives are connected—smart cities, autonomous cars—everything is exposed, and we need to make sure that connected doesn’t necessarily mean vulnerable.
This is where the technology industry is heading and hopefully security will not be an afterthought but put in place in advance, even though history indicates that it’s usually after something bad happens that people start to do something about it.