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Message 1 of 7

Hardware firewall - any experience?

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Hi

Does anyone have any experience of using a hardware firewall with a Smart Hub 2 and complete wifi?

My main interest is in protection/security of smart home devices, such as heating, TV, plugs, etc using tools such as Alexa.

Thanks in advance

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Message 2 of 7

Re: Hardware firewall - any experience?

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Do you mean you want to isolate those devices from your main network?
I use Unifi and simply removed the BT homehub from the equation.
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Message 3 of 7

Re: Hardware firewall - any experience?

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I run Wireguard on a Raspberry Pi 4. No upnp or open ports on the router apart from the vpn of course.

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Message 4 of 7

Re: Hardware firewall - any experience?

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OK, @Stu_H , I maybe need to explain things a bit further. Various members of my family have different bits of ‘smart’ tech in their houses and, for some reason, come to me for help. This is, to some extent, because in the past, I’ve been able to sort out many of their IT problems.

Last week I was asked about the risk of smart devices being hacked/accessed from outside. This was partly due to my niece being unable to login to the app that controls, and allows her to view the feed from, the camera by her garage. She is an on-call doctor and always checks the feed before she goes to the garage at night.

As it turned out, she’d forgotten that she’d been forced by the app to change the password but, after reading about security camera hacking, it’s got her a bit worried. She has quite a few smart devices, of the type mentioned in my original post. She also has IT equipment that links to clinical systems for remote diagnostics so there may be limitations on what she can do (without affecting how they connect via a supplied VPN).

I had wondered if it would be possible to create subnets off the router so she could have, for example, one for her smart devices and another for her ‘work’ equipment. I read something about hardware firewalls that implied that that was possible – unfortunately, I ended up going down lots of rabbit holes that just confused matters.

Thanks in advance for any ideas/info.

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Message 5 of 7

Re: Hardware firewall - any experience?

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All that will do is compartmentalise things within the home network, it won't do anything to improve security from external sources.

As long as UPnP is turned off and no ports are forwarded, the hub will be secure.

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Message 6 of 7

Re: Hardware firewall - any experience?

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I’ve separated my IoT from my main network so that nothing from them can see anything on my other networks and I run a guest WiFi using hotspots.

ive a fair number of IoT and never seen a problem to be honest, I did have a nasty on my Shield tv and that was using a third party app and that was blocked by the routers security and I had to hard reset to clear it out.

BT routers are very basic as they need to be, the largest threat to cameras if they connect via the WiFi is deauth attack and that’s mostly 2.4ghz. A router with PMF as long as the device is compatible will secure that. 

 

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Message 7 of 7

Re: Hardware firewall - any experience?

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Thanks @Stu_H  - after I told her it's beyond my knowledge she's talked to the IT department at the hospital and they're going to look into it for her. My guess is they want to ensure whatever she needs for work isn't screwed up by me messing about with it 🤣