How can I use Guard to protect my network?

The Guard section of the Cogeco WiFi app allows you to toggle security features that can enhance your Internet experience and protect your network. Refer to the sections below to learn more about Privacy Mode, managing security events and Guard priorities.

• Online Protection: Real-time threat protection against crypto-mining, ransomware, malware, and more.
• Advanced IoT Protection: Protect your home network and connected devices against hackers and cybercriminals. The IoT (Internet of Things) covers any devices that are connected to your home network but are not traditional computing devices, such as smart appliances, toys, or lights.
• Adblocking: Enjoy a better online experience by blocking ads.

Note: There is also a parental control setting called Content Access, which can only be applied at the device or user level. For more information, refer to our articles on Device Settings or People Profiles.

Privacy Mode

As part of the Content Access and Guard features, the app needs to collect the DNS request information (not URLs) and sends it to the cloud to identify web-based sources that may have potential security risks. This can be disabled by turning on Privacy Mode.

When Privacy Mode is enabled:

• All Guard features will be disabled.
• Previously quarantined devices will be un-quarantined.
• DNS sampling will not be collected at any time.

Managing Security Events

Tapping on Manage security events will open a history of all security events over the last month so that you can see why something was blocked.

• Tap on the graph to filter the results to a specific date.
• Events are colour-coded by type (e.g. red for Online protection events).
• Tap on an event type to filter by type.
• Select the Approve tab to unblock specific websites or IP addresses (up to 50).
• Select the Block tab to block specific websites or IP addresses (up to 50).

Note: After approving or blocking a website/URL, the change may take 30-60 minutes to go into effect (the time may vary on different devices on your network).

Guard Priorities

Enabling any features from the Guard tab will enable them on all devices by default.

• To enable a Guard feature on a specific device, select the device from the Adapt tab.
• To enable a Guard feature on a specific user, select the user from People Profiles (see our article on People Profiles for more information).
• If you have different Guard settings at the network, device, and user levels, priority is always given to the most specific setting. For example, if you have Online Protection disabled at the network level but enabled for a device, the setting will be turned on for the device.