Advanced security on Sky wifi max

[PMac2k]

I have managed to setup my dhcp scope reserved ips and port forwards set as I'd like them.  I'm confused by one thing and I don't exactly know what it's purpose is. 

I have a panel for Advanced Security, this appears on the app and mysky web pages.  On the app it cycles through 2 states.  

 and 

 on opening it it either asks me to enable it or.

Or says whoops.

 not once have I seen it enabled!  

Whats it purpose, is it supposed to do something, how do I fix it.  All the usual suspects have been tried, hard factory reset of the router, clearing of cache and data from the sky app, uninstallation of the mysky app and re install.  Annoyingly this also occurs on the website, which makes me think it's a cloud managed option and  problem.

Does anyone else get these symptoms? Is it normal?

[TimmyBGood]

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@PMac2k wrote:

 Annoyingly this also occurs on the website, which makes me think it's a cloud managed option and  problem.

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On that, I'd note the press release at launch claimed:

Stay protected online with maximum security 

WiFi Max offers advanced security, protecting every device connected to the network. From smart doorbells and cameras to your personal laptops and mobiles, everything is protected by the latest in artificial intelligence to detect and block threats. All connected devices are monitored in real time to alert customers to security threats as they happen via the MySky App. This is the UK’s most advanced network security from a major broadband provider. 

Unfortunately the Help section is remarkably uninformative on the subject.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-wifi-max 

[PMac2k]

Having spoken to support they didn't seem to know a lot about it either.  I just can't seem to get it to activate at all. Although by the fact it says I have 41 issues it seems to be somewhere half way between.

Is it just me or is anyone else seeing this behaviour?  

In the spirit of completness I have a couple of other SSIDs running from Unifi Access points around the house.  I currently have 37 devices connected across the house much of which is IoT.  Could I have overwhelmed it?

[TimmyBGood]

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@PMac2k wrote:

In the spirit of completness I have a couple of other SSIDs running from Unifi Access points around the house.  I currently have 37 devices connected across the house much of which is IoT.  Could I have overwhelmed it?

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Given the tradition of Ubiquiti doing its own rather creative things with what are supposed to be standards, I'd think that's quite possible.

[PMac2k]

Sorry for going quiet but I've had some successes and some failures.  I removed all my port forwarding rules and reset the dhcp setup, shut off the Unifi APs and restarted the router.  Initially nothing happened, everything remained the same, but then... I intermittantly found the Advanced Security showed as active AND had threats it had detected, a number fo IP addresses with no name resolution, turned out to be discord server IPs.  It even allowed me to make allowances on those detected threats.

Fast forward to late last night and I re-activated a port forward for port 443 to my nginx proxy. Now it might be a coincidence or it might not but I'm back to the Advanced Security showing not activated or in error, could it be that this IS managed locally from a cloud service over 443?

I guess I will leave it as is for a week or so and see if it starts working again then maybe drop my 443 rule again and see if it returns after that.

Some more experimenting I guess!

[NaveedZ]

@PMac2k hi, i enabled the "advanced security" with threat monitoring and real time reporting on.
- where do you get information about your 41 issues? just an android notification?

can you get a report on it somewhere?

how does it look like, " a bunch of ip suspicious" or some explanation and severity ?

It's so vague i'm wondering if our traffic is being monitored more closely , who's the security provider, and what about privacy.

i'm thinking of turning it off as between yesterday and today i got no alert.

i'm interested to know what it does, the lack of documentation is not a reassuring factor

Can you share your experience ? thanks

[Mandz85]

This has been a pointless setting in the My Sky app the whole way through. It would be nice if Sky could provide an update on what it is actually supposed to do. The fact that some customers are struggling to enable it, makes it sound more like it's something that was meant to be implemented with a future update but never got released.  Enabling it on iPhone it doesn't really seem to do much, and disabling it produces a pop up that shows enabling & disabling this threat monitoring may take up to 15 mins.

I personally have left it disabled for the same reason that broadband shield is disabled as I don't need it interfering with my connection, but the threat monitoring would be interesting to have if it worked. Which it doesn't seem to at the moment. 

[PMac2k]

Mine did eventually set on and appears to have stayed.  I'm not entirely sure when where or how it eventually started working and in the main part it just seems to look for suspicious connections, most seem to be anonymous ip addresses.  A little bit of whois work finds what I'm looking for and gives me an idea what the source is.  So far it's not cause a big problem having it running and I just periodically check in and have a nosey around.

[NaveedZ]

i left it disabled, topic closed on my side thanks