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McAfee brings a new update on Amazon Alexa

Shery by Shery Williams

Published Sun, Mar 25th 2018, 13:56 | Computers

McAfee wants to bring smart home security as easy as any other voice command like Alexa go through the security scan on all the connected devices. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the antivirus and security software Company declared their partnership with the McAfee Secure Home Platform Skill for Amazon Alexa. Soon after, the McAfee skills get enable, Alexa users can use it for their parental controls by using voice commands and will able to manage their home’s network security. In January at CES, the company had announced that the skill will only work if the router is connected to the McAfee Secure Home Platform. The McAfee Alexa will let the customers manage the McAfee Secure Home Platform through voice, rather than through an Android or iOS app.  The Internet of Things (IoT) router solution extends McAfee’s desktop security to every device on your home network as well as lets the users create a secure profile for different family members. According to McAfee’s Chief Consumer Security Evangelist, Gary Davis, the McAfee skill will get introduced with more than 10 commands for Alexa. Davis in an interview with PCMag share the reason behind McAfee chose to start with Alexa was due to the platform’s maturity and popularity. But the Company looked into this as a workplace for enabling the voice activation security across the smart home landscape. Gary Davis says addressing the audience that they must have seen a huge adoption of these home automation devices with Alexa as the leader of the pack. He further says that the company is looking at this as entirely and they have already started with Alexa, whereas the devices by Google and Apple are gaining critical mass.  They just wanted to watch how the Alexa launch goes by and how many skills they have created, then quickly re-purpose them for other platforms. Davis goes on saying that McAfee had worked directly with Amazon to built a set of skills for simplifying the smart home device security. At launched it has been announced that the McAfee Secure Home Platform Skill will be able to perform device and the vulnerability scans, send the infected device alerts and set up individual security controls such as at what time children’s are allowed to be online and many more.Some of the few available commands at launch, includes: “Alexa, ask McAfee to block/unblock a specific device”. “Alexa, ask McAfee to scan my network”. “Alexa, ask McAfee to pause the internet for a specific user”. “Alexa, ask McAfee how many devices are online right now”. “Alexa, ask McAfee what is the status of my network”   Davis says that the audience can enquire Alexa about what devices they have at their home and she‘ll go through them and will tell them what’s new. He further says that the audience can say ‘Hey Alexa, run vulnerability scan’ and the Alexa may reply that the lightbulb has default username and password, and the user should change it. McAfee also talked about the Alexa skill that it has gone through Amazon’s certification process but the availability will differ depending on the hardware partners, since the skill will require McAfee Secure Home Platform Software on the router. The company is expecting one partner router, the D-Link AC2600, which will be available by the second half of 2018. Source : https://activate-mcafee.net/mcafee-brings-a-new-update-on-amazon-alexa/ Follow this link for more information mcafee.com/activate 

Bio

Shery Williams has been writing technical articles, She loves to write on antivirus software, web browsers, operating systems like Windows, Mac and more. In all her articles, she tries to make her readers updated with the latest changes happening around the technology world.