How do I use Guard to protect my network?

Guard is a suite of features in the Cogeco Wi-Fi app designed to enhance your Internet experience and protect your network. You can apply these features to your entire network, individual profiles or individual devices.

Here are the Guard features available with the app:

• Online protection: Get 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. 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.
• Remote access protection: Block incoming connections to your devices that originated outside of your home network.
• Adblocking: Enjoy a better online experience by blocking ads.
• Content access: Ensure that your kids aren’t accessing inappropriate content by applying one of the following filters: Kid appropriate, Teenager friendly or No adult content. Content access can only be applied to profiles and devices.

Enabling Guard features

• To enable Guard features for your entire network, scroll down to the Guard section on the Cogeco Wi-Fi app home screen and select the settings icon. If you enable or disable a feature from here, it will apply the change to all profiles and devices on your network, overwriting individual settings.
  
  
  
• To enable Guard features for a profile, select the profile from the People screen and select the settings icon next to Events. If you enable or disable a feature from here, it will apply the change to all devices associated with that profile. Learn more about managing profiles.
  
  
  
• To enable features for a device, select the device from the Devices screen and select the settings icon next to Events. If the device is assigned to a profile, changing a setting will apply it to all devices assigned to that profile. Learn more about managing devices.

Viewing Guard events

To view Guard events, scroll down to the Guard section on the home screen. This will display the number of events from the last 30 days for different Guard features. Select the Guarding home panel for a more detailed view.

• By default, events from all devices over the last 24 hours will be displayed. To filter the events by profile or time, select the filter button at the top. The At home filter will show events for devices that aren’t assigned to any profile.
  
  
  
  
• To view and manage website exceptions, select the 3 dots at the top right and select View Approved list or View Blocked list. Select the + icon at the top right of the list to add or remote a website. You can approve or block up to 50 websites by URL or IP address.
  
  
  • Note: After approving or blocking a website, it can take 30 to 60 minutes for the change to take effect (the time may vary on different devices on your network).
• The Events graph is colour-coded by event type. Select an event type below the graph to filter it, or tap on a date in the graph to view events for that day.
  
  • To authorize a connection that was blocked automatically, select the event from the list and select the 3 dots. You can authorize it for everyone, or for the selected profile.
    

Privacy mode

As part of the Content Access and Guard features, the app needs to collect the DNS request information (not URLs) and send it to the cloud to identify potential security risks.

If you need to disable data collection, you can enable Privacy mode but your network will no longer be protected. You can easily enable and disable this feature for a private session without affecting your original settings. Scroll down to the Guard section of the Cogeco Wi-Fi app home screen, select the settings (gear) icon and tap the toggle switch next to Privacy mode.

When Privacy mode is enabled:

• All Guard features will be disabled.
• Previously quarantined devices will be un-quarantined.
• DNS info will not be collected.