These days, a cybersecurity suite needs to cover ALL aspects of cybersecurity. With this in mind, not only does ReaosnLabs provide customers with a full range of security products including EDR, VPN, SafePass Password Manager and Safer Web DNS - but we have also turned our attention to the component that so many other cybersecurity companies neglect - a parental controls arm.

As previously discussed by CTO Andrew Newman in his article Cybersecurity and Kids: How To Help Protect the Weakest Link? there are factors that affect the cybersecurity of individual consumers that they may not even realize. Younger members of the household can compromise a family’s cybersecurity in a variety of ways.

Additionally, the far-reaching connections that the Internet affords us also comes with a host of cybersecurity problems and risks that can affect our kids. To that end, ReasonLabs has prioritized adding a parental control app to our cybersecurity suite, aptly named FamilyKeeper.

Let’s take a look at how and why parental controls can offer added cybersecurity, and why it is so important.

Stranger Danger

Kids today can access online games and social media app that often allow unknown contacts to reach out to other participants / users / gamers. Without realizing it, this often places your child at risk. An online predator may be able to wheedle out information from an assuming child, and use that information to compromise their cybersecurity.

And that’s just the least of it - cybersecurity aside, online predators are also a danger full stop - when it comes to unknown contacts, you really never know who your child is meeting online, or what their agenda is.

Using a parental control app, you an block unknown contacts from having access to your child.

Offensive Content, Websites and Apps

Kids today have an uncanny knack for being able to click on almost anything online, bypassing age recommendations, and exploring more of the digital world than parents probably know about.

Yet as much as there is a lot of educational content out there that is purely beneficial, there is also so much that you wouldn’t want your child to be exposed to - whether it’s racially offensive, sexually explicit, pornographic, paedophilic, or just generally age-inappropriate.

Social media apps in particular have also generated terrible stories of cyberbullying in recent years. By using a parental control app, parents can monitor which apps and websites their children can use, and block particular apps and sites, thereby protecting them from viewing unsuitable content, and using apps or sites that are adult-only.

In-App Purchases & Credentials Theft

Have you received any messages notifying you of an online purchase you didn’t make, or seen an item on your credit card bill that you don’t recognize - and later discovered that one of your kids has been busy buying the latest ‘skin’ on Fortnite, coins or tokens for online gaming, or simply clicked on a pop-up, either knowingly or unknowingly?

Not only do kids notoriously not quite understand that in-app purchases are actually costing their parents real money - additionally, there is a certain lax in security when it comes to entering parents’ credit card details online. This can not only end up costing you quite a bit financially but can also compromise the family network from a cybersecurity perspective, as personal information could be used for hacking purposes.

Again, by being able to monitor your child’s online mobile activity, you can prevent these cybersecurity risks before they occur, and receive alerts of untoward activity.

As well as adding to the cybersecurity element of your home network, as mentioned above, our parental control app has also been created to protect kids in other areas as well, by also concentrating on anti-cyberbullying software that identifies offensive keywords, and geolocation GPS so that you know when your child is somewhere safe.

Additionally, at ReasonLabs, we feel strongly that education and awareness are the most important factors in consumer cybersecurity. This starts at ground level. By using a parental control app like FamilyKeeper, we provide parents and kids with the tools to navigate the digital world safely, helping youngsters and their parents to stay cyber aware of the risks and pitfalls of the online world.

For more information on FamilyKeeper, you can visit us at familykeeper.reasonlabs.com.

We also invite parents to join our online community group Digital World Parenting.