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At CES 2025, it was hard to find any kind of residential appliance or fixture that wasn’t connected to the web in some way—and as internet of things (IoT) devices spread across the home, it’s more important than ever to ensure the increased attack surface is secure.
One example: doggy doors.
Insecure pet doors are a potential weak spot for home security, as burglars and other threats (coyotes, for example) might be able to squeeze their way through. Most cheaper models offer little more than a flap or sheet of plastic to deny access to an attacker.
Martin Diamond, the founder and CEO of Pawport, showed off the company’s solution during Pepcom’s Digital Experience event at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. Pawports are smart, motorized pet doors designed to replace existing fixtures, offering both enhanced convenience and security by only opening when it senses the proximity of a pet wearing a paired transmitter on their collar. While the original concept stemmed from a 2021 Kickstarter campaign, the company plans to launch the product this year.
“You lock it on, and you’ve transformed it that quickly from an old-fashioned pet door into something sleek and modern,” Diamond told IT Brew. “A lot of different finishes, control the lights, control schedules for your dogs, curfews, lightning detection, all things that you can do.”
“This is like the maximum security, all the bells and whistles,” he added.
Pawports are made of steel and aluminum, and Diamond said they’re also bulletproof—as evidenced by a display model riddled with bullet holes. (What kind of bullet? “Pretty good ones,” he said.)
Should small arms fire not be a major concern for you and your beloved pet, Pawport has digital security controls in place. Diamond said the company’s collars communicate with the door using rolling codes, or deterministically generated single-use keys that can’t be reused. Rolling code systems are significantly more secure than those relying on static codes, especially when combined with encryption.
Since Pawport utilizes both rolling codes and encryption, Diamond said, the Pawport system has strong protection against replay attacks utilizing stolen credentials like a cloned transmitter on a pet’s collar.
Finally, owners can schedule the Pawport to be active only during certain times of the day, limiting the times when a thief could break in, even with a stolen collar. The door also transmits notifications whenever a pet uses it.
“There’s people that do scooping and relaying,” Diamond said. “Security on that kind of scale is always a challenge for lock companies—we do the same thing they do to try to prevent that.”
“For anyone other than a master cyber thief, we’re going to pretty much block that,” he added.
One possible sticking point for customers? The price. According to The Verge, Pawport’s flagship model will debut at $499, with the option to pair it with an outside-facing weatherproof door that costs an additional $399.