Whether you like it or not, your home has officially become the next great battleground for security appliance vendors.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and remote and hybrid work become a fact of life, security vendors are looking for new ways to capitalize on this emerging market.

We caught the first glimpse of this earlier this month when Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks each launched appliances that claim to provide enterprise-grade cybersecurity for remote workers and small businesses while protecting corporate assets and employees’ homes.

Both appliances are mesh-enabled WiFi 6 routers, which can be configured by the remote worker using an app. If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because these devices are really no different from the kinds of mesh routers Eero and Google have offered for years.

Despite making a name for itself building sophisticated security and network ASICs, Fortinet’s HomeWRK is, underneath its attractive plastic shell, just another Linksys mesh router.

And while it isn’t clear what kind of hardware Palo Alto Networks’ Okyo Garde is based on, I have no doubt it’s equally pedestrian.

While I can understand financially why Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet are going after this market, I’m not sure who these devices are really for.

For one, they aren’t that sophisticated. A next-generation firewall for the home these are not. In large part these devices simply automate the process of deploying a separate, segmented wireless network for corporate communications that can be remotely managed by the enterprise.

Meanwhile, security functionality is also somewhat rudimentary, consisting of what appears to be a web content filter that’s updated periodically with the respective vendor’s threat intelligence.

All of this is fine and good, but I just don’t see what these appliances offer that an endpoint security and/or secure access service edge (SASE) software agent don’t already.

The one argument you could make for an appliance is quality of service (QoS) functionality to ensure your teenager’s video game or TikTok streaming habits don’t disrupt your next Zoom call. The problem with this argument is QoS has been baked into most modern WiFi routers for years. And if you’re using an app-controlled router, like those from Google, Eero, or Linksys, you can prioritize traffic from any device with the press of a button.

In my opinion, a software agent running on a laptop or phone just makes more sense for the “branch of one” as the vendors have taken to calling remote workers. If you happened to have a couple employees living together, maybe an appliance starts to make more sense, but I suspect that's a pretty small market.

What’s more, the security capabilities offered by SASE are arguably superior to what either Fortinet or Palo Alto Networks have managed to cram into these devices. Remember, no fancy ASICs to be found here.

And to prove my point, in addition to the basic security functionality built into Palo Alto Networks’ Okyo Garde, the device can act as a SASE gateway, offloading traffic to the nearest point of presence for additional inspection. However, tellingly, this functionality is being marketed toward small businesses, not home users.

Then, of course, there’s the privacy problem. Do you really trust your employer not to snoop on you and your family? How about Fortinet or Palo Alto Networks?

Personally, the idea of installing a company-owned appliance in my home made my skin crawl as it evoked headlines about the emerging tattleware market. Best intensions aside, the number of scenarios where I see this going horribly wrong are too numerous to count.

The vendors will swear up and down personal traffic is completely segregated from work traffic, but that all comes back to trust.

I’m sure plenty of people trusted Ring, a company acquired by Amazon for $1 billion in 2018, not to snoop on their home security cameras. But early last year, that’s exactly what happened when four employees were fired for abusing internal access and spying on customers, often in compromising situations.

So I ask again, are you really ready to plug a company-managed appliance into your home network for the sake of security? I for one am not.