Having worked in the privacy and cybersecurity space for nearly two decades, it’s been fascinating, albeit a bit alarming, to bear witness to the evolution of the cyber landscape since the 2000’s. In my role at NETGEAR today, it is an absolute honor to work in an industry so critical to the security of Americans and citizens of allied nations.
Kirsten Daru, NETGEARChief Privacy Officer
This month is Cybersecurity Month, and in light of that, I want to take the opportunity to share some important information to:
Here’s the bottom line: your home router is your digital front door, and just like your physical home, it’s important that you trust the lock on that front door and that it’s strong.
Every 24 hours, the average household faces around thirty cyberattacks. Recent data indicates that these attacks are on the rise, and potentially occurring 3 times more often in 2025 than 2024.
That’s like a stranger testing your door handle more than a few times a day. And even careful, security-conscious families can unknowingly leave their home networks wide open.
The good news: protecting your digital home doesn’t require a PhD in cryptography or rocket science. It’s easy. And we’re here to help.
With that, let’s get into why the security hygiene of your home and small office equipment is so important, followed by some simple steps you can take to play a role in your own safety. Please take 5 minutes to read this to the end—it may give a quick boost to your security instincts.
IN THIS ARTICLE
If your router has been quietly doing its job for years, it may no longer be doing the most important one: keeping you safe online. Cyber risks evolve every day and older routers can’t always keep pace. Even if your connection feels fast, your network could be silently vulnerable.
For example:
Older routers often no longer receive firmware updates. Without new patches, known vulnerabilities remain open to attack.
Advancements like WPA3 encryption, automatic firmware updates, and built-in firewalls are designed to work with modern hardware. If your router is several years old, these critical protections may not be available to you.
The average home now has dozens of connected devices — TVs, cameras, thermostats, laptops, and more. Each one depends on your router to help stay safe. If your router wasn’t designed for this load, it’s not just falling behind on security, it’s also slowing you down.
Strengthening your home and small office defenses is simple—again, I promise!
Take a look at your current router and make note of its make and model. Then go to the manufacturer’s website to determine:
If the answer to either of the above questions is no, I highly recommend considering replacing your network hardware with a newer model from a brand you trust. (And while I’m biased, there are several reasons you should at least consider NETGEAR. We’ve done some pretty ground-breaking things to help strengthen those locks!)
Bonus perk: if you indeed have an older router model, an upgrade to newer technology might have the added benefit of higher speed, lower latency and better overall performance.
Once you have your new router or mesh system, here are a few other simple things you can do to help connect with confidence:
Earning and maintaining the trust of our customers and partners is paramount to us. NETGEAR is an American company, founded nearly 30 years ago in San Jose, California. Networking is all we do, meaning that you don’t have to worry about your information being used for ancillary business purposes. We also don’t sell/monetize data. The minimal data elements we DO collect relate to the performance and security of your equipment as well as optimization of your customer experience end-to-end—which, for the record, does NOT include network web browsing activity. Oh goodness. Don’t get me started.
We’ve double downed on the privacy and security features of our products, and below are three examples of how we do that.
NETGEAR takes a layered approach to security features. In addition to fundamentally essential features: WPA3 encryption, a smart firewall and the option to enable automatic firmware updates, NETGEAR goes further. Our routers and mesh systems also include Advanced Router Protection (ARP), a built-in security layer that helps identify and block certain high-risk known and emerging threats before software even exists to patch them.
Here’s how it works:
When certain new, high-risk threats are identified, NETGEAR ARP is programmed to identify the vector path that bad actors could use to exploit them. With that information, ARP can then proactively catch attempts at exploitation of those paths and block them before they hit your network—and before software exists and is rolled out to patch the gap.
In addition to the features that come baked into NETGEAR routers and mesh systems like Advanced Router Protection, we offer an additional layer of protection known as NETGEAR Armor.
I like thinking about Armor this way: having the right lock is essential, but a security guard outside your front door offers even more peace of mind.
Armor extends protection from beyond your router to connected devices on your network —like phones, laptops, smart TVs and cameras — scanning for suspicious activity and helping to identify and/or block threats before they cause harm.
As the cyber security and geopolitical landscape changes, NETGEAR is (and I personally am) committed to changing with it. You may have seen news recently about the US government being concerned about connected components in home and small business network equipment from certain Chinese companies on the FCC’s (growing) Covered List, or list of companies and services that are deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.
At NETGEAR, we are pleased to announce that not only have we gotten ahead of these new proposed regulations on our own accord, but we have taken several steps further. For instance:
Meanwhile, we’re working tirelessly to further increase our supply chain presence in the US and remain committed as ever to evolving and pivoting as the technological, cyber and geopolitical landscape continues to shift and being a trusted resource to our customers.
Stay safe out there!
