Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: security, firewall | Themes: Laptops and Notebooks, Networking, The Internet
- 1. The Urge to Miniaturize Networking Appliances is Pervasive
- 2. Yoggie Pico to the Rescue!
- 3. Yoggie Pico Security Components, Fit and Finish
- 4. Installing and Using the Yoggie Pico
3. Yoggie Pico Security Components, Fit and Finish
One fundamental security principle informs the Yoggie Pico Pro’s design and operation: physical separation isolates your computer from the Internet, thereby firewalling any inbound security threats. Driver software diverts the typical Windows TCP/IP network stack to the Pico Pro unit, where content is scanned before release to higher-level network protocol layers. This creates a transparent security appliance with an almost NAT-like filtering environment between the network and your PC.
Security applications included with the Yoggie Pico Pro include:
- Integrated firewall
- Snort Intrusion Detection System
- Snort Intrusion Prevention System
- Sourcefire VRT certified Snort rules
- Kaspersky anti-virus
- Kaspersky anti-spyware
- MailShell anti-spam
- MailShell anti-phishing
- Web proxy
- Mail (SMTP/POP3) proxy
- SurfControl Web content filtering
- Parental Content Control
- Adaptive Security Policy (TM)
- Multi-Layer Security Agent (TM)
- VPN client
- VPN server (Pro model only)
- Layer-8 Security Engine(TM)
This level of capability typically carries with it a serious burden of configuration and setup to become effective, but the Pico Pro offers an amazingly simple setup process nevertheless. Plug it in, install its driver and it’s ready to scrub traffic on your behalf. Annoyed by pop-up reminders notifying you about outdated or updated definitions, signatures or software? No worries here: the Pico Pro silently updates itself hourly. Aside from the Kaspersky, MailShell and VPN components; Yoggie software engineers built the rest of the software themselves (often, as one might imagine, by customizing Open Source packages for the various tasks involved that are so readily available for Linux).
Size and shape are noteworthy in this design, because the Pico Pro extends a fairly wide profile (nearly ½”; 124 mm), which can encroach upon or even displace neighboring USB devices. Our desktop test machine (in an Antec P-180 case) features two side-by-side USB ports on a front panel, where the Yoggie managed to crowd the neighboring USB plug to the extent that it sat visibly crooked in its socket. Despite this potential issue, easily resolved by using a $3 USB extender cable, the Yoggie Pico Pro manages to pack an amazing amount of functionality and capability into its tiny enclosure.
- Previous page Yoggie Pico to the Rescue!
- Next page Installing and Using the Yoggie Pico
Or wait... maybe you're just saying that those OSes are all completely secure and don't need anything else... riiiiiight.
That bit published by Google that malware can install just by visting a site is rather disturbing. Downloading and running a malware program is one thing, but just clicking on a link and getting infected should be blocked by a device like this. Does the pico block such attackS?
Or do I need to maintain my clean and dirty setups. One setup is only for known good sites or offline activity and it is unplugged while the dirty setup is online. Normally the dirty setup is clean, but the anti-virus software has been eaten before.
My laptop performance after the install is way beyond what I had expected. Before installing the Pico, opening an Excel spreadsheet from a LAN drive took over 1 minute (with Norton 360 installed). After the Pico install and uninstall of Norton, opening the same Excel document took less than 5 seconds!!! Another performance boost that I noticed was when I wake up my laptop (after about 30 min of inactivity) - it used to take a long time to fully wake up to the point where it was usable again (at lease a min or more - depending on how long it was inactive), where it is virtually instantaneous now.
I've been raving about this little device all day. So far, it ranks among my top 2 gadget purchases ever (right along side my Harmony Remote).
I highly recommend it.