Resolution: Greatly improve the security and privacy of the network traffic from your home network and device, with a few simple steps.
I follow @Cloudflare for their enterprise solutions, but they help us consumers out too. And a lot of it is free.
A thread... /1
The content of your web traffic is encrypted (HTTPS) - but your ISP can still see what domains you are calling. Help protect your web requests by using 1.1.1.1 (fast & secure DNS resolver), and 1.1.1.1 for Families (block known malware sites, or malware + adult content). /2
It's easy to switch your entire home network to it. Change your router's DNS lookups to 1.1.1.1/1.0.0.1 (or 1.1.1.2/1.0.0.2 for malware block, or 1.1.1.3/1.0.0.3 for adult content block). See setup instructions on developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/
/3
And suddenly, all your home network's domain name lookups (DNS) are more private by not using your ISP's DNS for it, plus are extremely fast. In fact, it's nearly twice as fast as Google's Public DNS resolver @ 8.8.8.8, that I was using before (12ms to 21ms). /4
From there, secure your device traffic -- from laptops, phones, and tablets -- by installing the 1.1.1.1 + WARP client. This is a device agent that uses 1.1.1.1 when you are off your home network, but also uses the WARP VPN client for added security over your web traffic. /5
The WARP VPN provides an encrypted tunnel from your device to @Cloudflare 's edge network. This assures you are secure from prying eyes (your ISP, or wifi sniffers). Add in the paid option ($5/mo), WARP+, to speed it all up, by using Argo Smart Routing over their backbone. /6
Sign up for 1.1.1.1 + WARP device apps via warp.plus/bW67d. This is a referral link to get me a some WARP+ credits.
I'd appreciate it, as I'd like to research how Argo Smart Routing over @Cloudflare backbone performs. /7
I installed WARP app on my Mac, iPhone and iPad. Once installed, copy the license key from one device to all the rest, so you are under one account. You can tweak settings to turn WARP on/off when you go to cell or other wifi networks, if desired, or just leave it always on. /8
Using 1.1.1.1 for DNS on your home router and devices, and the WARP VPN on device traffic, gives you a LOT of protection for free. Thanks @Cloudflare. Will be testing WARP+ ("the Internet fast lane") to see how it improves things. /9
From there, if you want extreme privacy on devices, you'll need a privacy-focused VPN that anonymizes its logs. I use Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN. Not cheap, but it's on sale right now, here is my referral code (giving me free month). privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-a-vp…
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Last VPN tip - using a VPN (WARP or PIV or others) can make certain apps angry. In particular, banking apps don't seem to like VPNs in their fraud detection routines. (My bank thinks any VPN is putting me out of the country.) Just turn it off temporarily when you hit this. /11
Beyond web traffic protection & privacy, you can get consumer-grade endpoint protection. This helps cover the other ways you can be attacked (email, txt msgs, etc). Not sure which is best but I know Bitdefender, Sophos, McAfee, Trend Micro, Kaspersky all have solutions. /12
Too bad @CrowdStrike doesn't offer consumer-grade yet. It wouldn't be as lucrative as enterprise customers but think of all that added traffic empowering Threat Graph, CrowdStrike! Perhaps a future pivot point for Falcon platform. /13
Happy New Year. Let's make it a secure one!
Got any other easy tips to help improve home network and device security? /fin
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Lots of folks brooding about $FSLY and asking my take over past week. My take is... “I want more info”. I am not one to rush decisions, and want to see what earnings shows on Wed before deciding. /1
Basically Fastly proved it is mortal. Rev will be at the 42% they just pegged it at (the Q in question already ended) which is right back in the high end of the range it was bouncing around at pre-pandemic. /2
They have always had a volatile top line that waxes and wanes, so is nothing new. Just a bit jarring after the huge tailwind of last Q. And this does not factor much into their future potential and long term success. /3
Today’s new One feature is a bigger deal than I thought it’d be from yesterday’s teaser. Bold moves that are understated from the headline. Cloudflare just took a big step into ‘s lane. /1
They are angling Access to be an SSO, not only accessing internal apps via Zero Trust (like ZPA), but also for all the other SaaS apps your enterprise uses. (Which up til now was solely the purview of the Gateway secure web gateway side.) /2
They are not eliminating . They will work with them and a wide variety of other identity providers, including multiple simultaneously. But after relying on Okta and others for establishing identity, they take over SSO to any enterprise apps from there. /3
The market sure in love with $NET today in realizing they are a $ZS competitor. Some of us have known this was coming since... uh (checks notes).... February.
Let’s refresh on a few past tidbits.... /1
“Sound familiar? It turns out Cloudflare is now a direct competitor to Zscaler. ... This new product line, Cloudflare for Teams, is a carbon copy of Zscaler.” - me back in Feb /2
The thing to watch now... they didn’t charge for it til Sept 1. (Very nice of them to help out in the chaos of pandemic.) This Q will have Teams contributing 1 month, while Q4 will have a full Q ... as mentioned in my recent Edge Network writeup. /3 hhhypergrowth.com/what-are-edge-…
The Friday scoop from Forbes played out. $TWLO acquired Segment, a “customer data platform” startup. This adds integration tools, ingest pipelines, customer vision, and analytics into Twilio stack. /1
Lawson really clarifies what they went after: “Communications was just the entry point for the real opportunity, which has been really providing a comprehensive platform for customer engagement....”. /2
“... The one thing that’s always been missing from Twilio as we’ve been building up this customer engagement platform is understanding of the end users themselves. We power the communications, but we don’t actually know who the customers are.” /3
enhances Workers w stateful objects. This opens a huge new use cases for app dev. blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-wo…. Blog post from @KentonVarda does a good job in showing its potential in laymen’s terms. This is pretty exciting from a developer stand point. /1
This is way more impactful than the “edge db” I was guessing (a stateful data store). This is stateful OBJECTS — instead of having a shared db across Worker instances, the Worker instance itself is what is shared. /2
Basically, shared objects can be maintaining state as a mini in-mem storage and logic pod. Think of it as a shared spreadsheet or doc. With this new feature, each doc is a separate Worker instance - you aren’t storing the data in a shared (multi-tenant) database or API layer. /3