Palo Alto Networks rolled out a security and networking appliance today that it says provides enterprise-grade cybersecurity for remote workers and small businesses while protecting corporate assets and employees’ homes.

The new Okyo Garde (pronounced “guard”) product integrates Palo Alto Networks’ security capabilities and threat intelligence into an Okyo mesh-enabled WiFi 6 system controlled by a mobile app. It’s available as a subscription that includes the hardware, software, and security services.

“It really is about seeing the home as a branch of one,” Palo Alto Networks EVP Mario Queiroz said.

The pandemic initially forced organizations to send their employees home to work, and many companies have since adopted hybrid or work-from-anywhere strategies. “People are working on crowded, oversubscribed, unknown, consumer-grade home networks,” Queiroz said. “The networks are under heavy usage, and this is fraught with networking problems and also security challenges.”

This is where Okyo Garde, and Queiroz, come in. Two years ago, Queiroz came to Palo Alto Networks from Google where he had extensive experience with consumer products and hardware. This was important in designing Okyo Garde to ensure that this new product provided Palo Alto Networks’ enterprise security, but in an easy-to-deploy manner and via an industrial-chic looking device that doesn’t look out of place sitting on a bookshelf or countertop.

“It’s really about the marriage of the enterprise-grade security with consumer product thinking,” Queiroz said.

For larger companies looking to protect employees who are working from home, Okyo Garde integrates with Prisma Access, Palo Alto Networks’ secure access services edge (SASE) platform, to provides cloud-delivered security and unified policy management to work-from-home employees.

These employees can also use Okyo Garde to provide an additional separate, private Wi-Fi network for the rest of their home and personal devices via a separate subscription. This network also includes security capabilities designed for consumers is solely controlled by the employee or other family members.

Palo Alto Networks plans to make Okyo Garde Enterprise Edition, with Prisma Access integration, generally available in early 2022.

Meanwhile, Okyo Garde for small business is available now. This subscription starts at $349 a year, it includes a mesh-enabled Wi-Fi 6 system controlled by a mobile app, some security functions that run on the hardware including malware and ransomware prevention, phishing protection, infected device detection (but not the entire SASE platform), and it also taps into Palo Alto Networks’ threat intelligence.

Customers can also order the Okyo Concierge service, which provides extra help with installation, 24/7 support, and on-site troubleshooting.

Queiroz says Okyo Garde provides better and simpler security compared to a low-end enterprise firewalls or even consumer routers running third-party security software.

“Our ability to prevent a command and control action, for example, is much higher than what you can get in consumer router, even with the subscription, so the security is upgraded compared to what you might get at a Best Buy or from Netgear or one of these firms,” he said. “It’s also the simplicity of it. You get one solution that has the WiFi, the networking, the security, and that comes with a mobile app, which is super simple to set up.”

Additionally, Palo Alto Networks’ constantly updated threat intelligence that comes from its 85,000 global customers provides the “secret sauce” for Okyo Garde, he said.