CUJO the Firewall Safety We All Need

Disclaimer: The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service for free. 

As parents our priority is always to take care of our children and protect them. However the dangers that face them as well as all of us are sometimes unseen to the naked eye.  Despite being a well connected home I have to admit we have never thought of said dangers.

Recently we received CUJO a smart firewall for connected homes. CUJO is designed to bring business-level security to homes with a network. CUJO is a one stop shop securing all of our devices, simply by connecting to my WiFi router.  CUJO will detect and block malicious sites, viruses, and hacks. We really have no concerns of either of these, so for us the bonus of CUJO is we can control what our kids access online and keep them safe.  If you have kids, you know how important it is to monitor their online activities, now CUJO can help us along the way.

CUJO is a straight forward setup, kind of like a plug and play.  However set up is not my thing. I plugged in CUJO, downloaded the app…. and it became obvious that setting up stuff isn’t for me when within 5 minutes of registering on the app, a CUJO representative called me to assist. Honestly initially I was kind of freaked out that a random person was calling me to access my macbook. Quickly my mind was put at ease, I mean think about it, who would be lurking outside my window to know I am setting up CUJO, LOL.  Within 10 minutes the kind rep gained access to my computer and had me all setup.

I was shocked to see we actually had TWENTY THREE devices attached to our Verizon WiFi. Goes to show you our home truly is a well connected one! I quickly setup profiles for the kids, because naturally I wanted to test out pausing the internet on their devices.  It didn’t take long before I heard the shouting from their respective rooms.

MOM!! WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE INTERNET? WHY IS XYZ SITE NOT LOADING?  MISSION COMPLETION!

In addition to the cool feature, of pausing their activities on line, I can also restrict access for selected website categories.  Certain things I don’t think my kids benefit from, like profanity, and other adult content. Although they may not be looking for said content, sometimes it could just be the next video or movie while streaming. We have all been sitting next to our kids when they are watching a cutesy video, and then all of a sudden something completely inappropriate is on the screen!

Ironically Cujo is not a mad guard dog protecting my home, instead he is cute little stump with light-up eyes, and shows different emotions as he goes through his many features.  I have often wondered how we can monitor their activities on their devices but really was content with them maintaining arms length of a family adult while on them.  As a bonus the kids really are unaware of what CUJO does exactly. While he is guarding all of our devices, filtering the internet for us, monitoring their social media, alerting and reporting to us all activities, they feel a little more mature because I am giving them more freedom.  Now they are free to go ahead and take advantage of their one hour a day of device time from anywhere within our home.  That is a family win!