Review: Yoggie Gatekeeper Pro (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Feb 09, 2009 at 02:54pm
Section:
Hardware
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Note: See updates at bottom of review.)
The Yoggie Gatekeeper Pro is a Linux powered mini-computer designed to secure your
laptop from any and all forms of network and Internet attack. I reviewed their stand alone portable USB powered SOHO firewall a while back and found it to be quite good, although lacking in some advanced configuration options. So how does this one stack up? Let's take a look and find out.
Overview
The card itself, as I stated above, is an actual mini-computer. But it's also more than that. It has it's own miniature hard drive, CPU and DDR memory chips. While it's unlikely that you'll be playing Quake or anything hardware intensive on it anytime soon, what it is capable of is more than sufficient for the microscopic hardware it has.
And what task is that? Well, being a hardware firewall for one. But at the same time it's not your typical hardware firewall. Most hardware based firewalls tend to be the more traditional kind, which operate directly on your network outside of your PC. The problem with that is, you need a physical hardwired connection to make use of them. If you're using Wireless, you're kinda up a creek, or forced to use a software solution. If you're on Windows, you also have to include an antivirus with that firewall, and much more.
But the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pro takes care of all that for you, by offloading all of the firewall, antivirus, spam filtering, and other functions onto the card itself, which runs a hardened version of Linux at it's core. I'm not sure what version, but it's definitely Linux. It also automatically updates itself with all the latest patches each time it goes online, including virus definitions and more.
Setup and usage is really very easy. All you need is a laptop that has either an ExpressCard 54 or 34 slot, and either Windows XP or Vista 32bit. I tried getting it to work under Linux, but so far that's not possible. Although, given that Linux sees the device, and Linux is being used on it, you may at some point be able to do just that. However, given that Linux is secure by nature, something like this really isn't needed on a laptop running Linux. Only those running Windows. But if you're paranoid about security, or don't feel like being bothered with setting up your own advanced security or filtering, then this card, in it's plug and play state, would be useful to you.
So how does this plug in hardware firewall work if it doesn't connect to the physical network? Well, it essentially takes full control over the network connection and pipes all incoming and outgoing traffic through the device itself before Windows, or anyone else sees it. And each byte that passes through the firewall will be studied, observed, picked through, and cleaned where necessary to ensure that you are not receiving any viruses, spyware, trojans or worse. It will even make (*gasp*) Internet Explorer secure. Well, more secure anyways.
The device is also loaded with 13 different security tools, including: URL Categorization and Filtering, Anti-Spam, Anti-Phishing, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Virus, Transparent E-mail Proxies (POP3, SMTP), Transparent Web Proxies (HTTP; FTP), Intrusion Detection/Prevention, VPN Client,
Stateful Inspection Firewall, and two other proprietary security solutions to secure your computer.
Yes, this card actually has it's own built in anti-virus program, as I mentioned before. The card comes with two basic configuration modes: A corporate managed mode, and a stand alone mode. The corporate managed mode allows a central corporate server to set and manage the settings on the card, so the user doesn't have to do anything, or in some cases to prevent them from doing anything that corporate doesn't approve of. The stand alone mode gives full control of all configurations to the individual user.
There's also an interesting little “anti-cheat” feature built into the Yoggie driver. If you're using the card, and you pop it out, you no longer have Internet. This is perfect for companies using the card in corporate managed mode. So, unless you have the ability to uninstall the driver, which most end users don't on IT managed corporate laptops, then you can't “cheat” and suddenly get access to sites that corporate says no to.
SetupFirst time setup is easy. You will need to start by disabling or uninstalling any existing software firewalls on your machine. Next, just pop in the driver disk, pop in the card, install the drivers, reboot, and let the card do the rest. It'll take about fifteen minutes or so to update the first time, but each subsequent update should be much quicker. First time setup takes you less than 2 minutes to complete. So, from that point on, the card is as simple to use as plug and use.
Once the drivers for the card have properly taken over, you'll be offered a chance to open the management console and go through all the steps necessary to setup the device, including choosing your language, management mode, and a few other security and registration related items. Once that's done, you can take your new card for a test drive via a handy online virus test file.
Features
Once you're done with setup, you can go into that same management console and see your logs (an even export them), adjust security settings, and more. There's even “basic” and “advanced” settings you can play with. And there is a lot more you can tweak in the pro than you ever could in the SOHO, which is a good improvement in my humble opinion.
The card also carries email spam protection, as mentioned above, which is a curious extra option. It works more or less just like Spam Assassin, and would almost lead me to believe that it's based upon a modified version of it. However, I can't be one hundred percent certain of that. But if that's true, then you can be certain that you've got one of, if not *the* best spam filtering system available today.
It's also not blind filtering. You do have the option to create and manage custom filters as well. It won't actually block the email if it detects it as spam, but it will flag the messages accordingly so you can choose how to filter them in your own email program. This way you still eliminate all the incoming spam, but you eliminate the potential negative effects of false positives should any occur.
Another change from the SOHO is the way in which the firewall filters content. It can filter it not just by IP and port anymore, but also by type. It can literally search for things like porn, firearms, advertisements and other known content types and block them. That's a feature I like quite a lot. You can also set your own custom rules which can match both port and IP, as well as patterns. Also, all the previous known virus and spyware ports are available for blocking, as well as the same list for common ports which can be either white or black listed.
Another interesting addition to the card is the ability to block files of a given size. In this case, 10mb. The only reason for this limit is because files over 10mb become difficult for the device to properly scan, and thus anything over 10mb is automatically ignored. If you do not wish them to be ignored (such as for downloading Linux isos and the like), just enable the size blockage feature.
If you're a corporate user, this can also be used, albeit indirectly, to prevent your users from downloading large files they shouldn't, such as direct download movies, web videos and the like. So if your company does enable this feature, it means that your days of sluffing off on youtube and Hulu are over. Of course, you don't really waste work time surfing youtube or Hulu, now do you?
And what I've listed is just the tip of the iceberg for what this card can do. It might seem like an excessive measure to want so much control. But trust me, when things start getting ugly, you'll want that extra ability to fine tune what this card can do.
The next thing up to look at is the diagnostics feature. The support and diagnostics section of the control center has an incredible number of tools you can use that will give you the ability to diagnose the card, your connection, and numerous other things. You can even download and store your logs off the device and move them over to another location.
ConclusionOverall I loved the card. It's really an amazing device and I was highly impressed with it's feature set. It also installed and ran first time, every time, and did it's job without hickup, burp, or glitch. In fact, you couldn't even tell it was in the machine, because it consumed no resources and didn't interfere with operations. Ok, it consumed a tiny bit of resources with communication and the drivers, but as far as the remaining 99% of what it did, all of that was handled by the card itself.
I easily give this card two thumbs up and would recommend it to others. I wish it would work on Linux, only because I think this would be a great addition to what Linux already has to offer. But for now, it'll do good protecting any future Windows laptops I may have.
Now one last thing that's had my curiosity for a while, ever since hearing about the card, is whether or not the internal computer on the card is directly user accessible. So far I have not found any way in, nor have any attempts to discover a way been successful. But since it was rumored to be possible, I'm sure that at some point someone will figure out how.
Now why, you ask, would I want to do this? Mostly just out of curiosity on my part. If you're a proper Linux user, wouldn't you be at least a little bit curious to explore the system and see what it could do or what's there? I am. But even so, for now, I'm content with this device operating as an uber firewall.
EDIT: Someone pointed out to me that I forgot to mention how secure the card was, of which they were correct. It was a small snafu on my part, so I'll go about and say that the card was utterly flawless security wise. I threw my entire security suite against it and it never once cracked. The spam protection had a few false positives and a few false negatives, but what few there were fall within acceptable guidelines, as they're emails that even some of the big spam filtering groups miss.
So in whole, I'd call it almost completely flawless, as it had a few chinks in the spam protection, and while I couldn't get anything past the anti-virus, there's nothing to say that something new won't sneak up at some point and get through, if only briefly. But what I found in my testing came back as 100% secure on the firewall, 98% good on the spam protection, and so far, 100% good on the anti-virus. I hope that clears things up a bit. Sorry for the omission.
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