This week, NordVPN launched a new feature that’s part of its VPN product, aimed at boosting its users’ security on desktop.
The vulnerability detection, which NordVPN introduced in an update to all of its Windows PC users, scans the user’s computer, checking for vulnerabilities in installed apps. The tool cross-references an extensive database of known security flaws associated with different app versions. If it detects an app with security flaws, it immediately alerts the user, allowing for them to take action to mitigate the potential cyber threat.
The vulnerability detection tool categorizes vulnerable apps into 4 levels: low (0.1 – 3.9), medium (4.0 – 6.9), high (7.0 – 8.9), and critical (9.0 – 10.0). These categories indicate the urgency and potential impact of the detected security flaw, from minor issues to critical security threats that could potentially lead to exposure of sensitive data, identity theft, and financial loss.
NordVPN’s vulnerability detection is included in all subscription plans free of charge. To enable vulnerability detection in the NordVPN Windows app, users need to follow a few simple steps: Click on the shield icon in the top-left corner to access Threat Protection and press the “Turn on” button under Vulnerability detection.
This new feature is part of NordVPN’s Threat Protection tool that features 2 other digital security tools: Web Protection, which blocks ad, trackers, and malicious sites, and File Protection, which scans downloads for malware, deletes malware-infected files, and alerts you about them.
Threat Protection is available both on Windows and macOS devices, but the vulnerability detection is only available for Windows users (at least for now!) that use Windows version 7.15 or newer. This is separate from NordVPN’s Threat Protection Lite feature that only blocks ads and malicious sites and is available on both its mobile and desktop apps.