Discussion
Watched the gadget show last night and decided to order one of these little marvels - equivalent Pentium 3 PC with 128mb of ram on a usb stick dedicated purely to security so you can remove your software security stuff. They're supposed to be much more secure and also supposed to speed up your computer as you no longer need a software firewall/anti-virus
Anyone else use them?
Anyone else use them?
Apparently it has anti virus built it - it also updates itself. I'm not that computer literate, but the gadget show explained it as effectively a PC on a stick. Your computer accesses the internet via the yoggie "computer" which scans all in-out traffic.
Link http://www.yoggie.com/
Link http://www.yoggie.com/
I saw that on The Gadget Show last night too.
Well, I must admit that I was massively sceptical to start with as there is no magic bullet to fix security on computers. But it seems that they might have something that works! It could yet be proven to be a very elaborate fake, but the person behind it was the CEO and founder of Finjan (www.finjan.com) and they have a pretty good reputation with content filtering and security for ActiveX and Java applications.
The anti-virus part works by installing a low-level device driver which then hooks into the Yoggie. Therefore, just like your normal AV product, it forwards the data for a program to be scanned. In this case it will off-load the scanning to an external computer, rather than running it on device. So yes, it does work and it does off load the processing.
However, I do see a couple of problems (not to be completely down on this):
1) Additional layer of NAT for all network access - yes, this might be OK, but it might cause issues with some VPN clients and other applications. Needs to be tested to be sure, but how does things like Instant Messaging work in this environment. Should work fine, but normal stuff like web browsing will be OK.
2) Device drivers needed - you still need to install something to force your computer to divert everything to the Yoggie. Yes, its better to off-load processing, but you still need the stubs to force it that way to start with. These could be prone to crashing, performance issues and how easy is it to bypass the security?
To be honest a damn good independent review should answer these questions, but without seeing them for real I am not sure. Looks good and very promising. I might just buy one for testing anyway.
Well, I must admit that I was massively sceptical to start with as there is no magic bullet to fix security on computers. But it seems that they might have something that works! It could yet be proven to be a very elaborate fake, but the person behind it was the CEO and founder of Finjan (www.finjan.com) and they have a pretty good reputation with content filtering and security for ActiveX and Java applications.
The anti-virus part works by installing a low-level device driver which then hooks into the Yoggie. Therefore, just like your normal AV product, it forwards the data for a program to be scanned. In this case it will off-load the scanning to an external computer, rather than running it on device. So yes, it does work and it does off load the processing.
However, I do see a couple of problems (not to be completely down on this):
1) Additional layer of NAT for all network access - yes, this might be OK, but it might cause issues with some VPN clients and other applications. Needs to be tested to be sure, but how does things like Instant Messaging work in this environment. Should work fine, but normal stuff like web browsing will be OK.
2) Device drivers needed - you still need to install something to force your computer to divert everything to the Yoggie. Yes, its better to off-load processing, but you still need the stubs to force it that way to start with. These could be prone to crashing, performance issues and how easy is it to bypass the security?
To be honest a damn good independent review should answer these questions, but without seeing them for real I am not sure. Looks good and very promising. I might just buy one for testing anyway.
off_again said:
I saw that on The Gadget Show last night too.
Well, I must admit that I was massively sceptical to start with as there is no magic bullet to fix security on computers. But it seems that they might have something that works! It could yet be proven to be a very elaborate fake, but the person behind it was the CEO and founder of Finjan (www.finjan.com) and they have a pretty good reputation with content filtering and security for ActiveX and Java applications.
The anti-virus part works by installing a low-level device driver which then hooks into the Yoggie. Therefore, just like your normal AV product, it forwards the data for a program to be scanned. In this case it will off-load the scanning to an external computer, rather than running it on device. So yes, it does work and it does off load the processing.
However, I do see a couple of problems (not to be completely down on this):
1) Additional layer of NAT for all network access - yes, this might be OK, but it might cause issues with some VPN clients and other applications. Needs to be tested to be sure, but how does things like Instant Messaging work in this environment. Should work fine, but normal stuff like web browsing will be OK.
2) Device drivers needed - you still need to install something to force your computer to divert everything to the Yoggie. Yes, its better to off-load processing, but you still need the stubs to force it that way to start with. These could be prone to crashing, performance issues and how easy is it to bypass the security?
To be honest a damn good independent review should answer these questions, but without seeing them for real I am not sure. Looks good and very promising. I might just buy one for testing anyway.
£49.99 from play.com at the moment (half price)Well, I must admit that I was massively sceptical to start with as there is no magic bullet to fix security on computers. But it seems that they might have something that works! It could yet be proven to be a very elaborate fake, but the person behind it was the CEO and founder of Finjan (www.finjan.com) and they have a pretty good reputation with content filtering and security for ActiveX and Java applications.
The anti-virus part works by installing a low-level device driver which then hooks into the Yoggie. Therefore, just like your normal AV product, it forwards the data for a program to be scanned. In this case it will off-load the scanning to an external computer, rather than running it on device. So yes, it does work and it does off load the processing.
However, I do see a couple of problems (not to be completely down on this):
1) Additional layer of NAT for all network access - yes, this might be OK, but it might cause issues with some VPN clients and other applications. Needs to be tested to be sure, but how does things like Instant Messaging work in this environment. Should work fine, but normal stuff like web browsing will be OK.
2) Device drivers needed - you still need to install something to force your computer to divert everything to the Yoggie. Yes, its better to off-load processing, but you still need the stubs to force it that way to start with. These could be prone to crashing, performance issues and how easy is it to bypass the security?
To be honest a damn good independent review should answer these questions, but without seeing them for real I am not sure. Looks good and very promising. I might just buy one for testing anyway.
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