Flight Sim Daily has now moved to the Flight Simulator Network. To continue receiving the very latest flight sim news, visit the News section on the Network.
All previous articles will remain here on Flight Sim Daily for you to search.
We’re always being told that we need to protect our PC’s against the threats from viruses, malware, spyware and all manner of other nasty things, and that’s good advice.
The problem for we flight simmers is that the software available to protect us invariably uses a fair (and in some cases a lot) of processing power. We want to preserve as many CPU cycles as possible to give us the best possible performance within the simulator, yet we should still be properly protected against security threats.
Yoggie has come to our rescue with a device that will provide us with that protection, whilst freeing up our PC’s from the task of doing so.
The Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico
Yoggie have a number of products available, but the one I’m reviewing here is their Gatekeeper Pico. It’s a tiny USB device, about the same size as a regular USB storage device. The clever bit is that it is actually a complete Linux-based computer on a USB stick!
Yoggie’s own description of the device sums it up well.
Yoggie Gatekeeper’s hardware was designed specifically for security purposes only. It includes a robust computing platform with a powerful CPU, with the sole purpose of protecting the laptop. Two separate network cards provide a physical separation between the unsafe zone (Internet) and the safe zone (connected to your laptop). The device also includes two separate Flash memory units. One unit stores a secured copy of the Linux OS. During pre boot, Yoggie copies the OS onto the second unit, and uses it during runtime. The original copy of the OS, stored on the first unit, does not include any “Write Access” permissions. This double-step process, guarantees that in the event of a successful attack, upon rebooting the device a clean and safe version of the OS is uploaded, making the OS and security applications completely safe.
This little computer sticking out of the side of your machine is providing all the protection you need, therefore allowing your system to use all of it’s own power to run the sim – fantastic!
The Pico doesn’t just provide anti-virus protection. In total, it has 12 systems designed to keep you safe.
- Online Anonymity
- Adaptive Security Policy™
- Multi-Layer Security Agent™
- Layer-8 Security Engine™
- URL Categorization & Filtering
- Anti-Spam
- Anti-Phishing
- Antispyware
- Antivirus
- Transparent Email Proxies (POP3; SMTP)
- Transparent Web Proxies (HTTP; FTP)
- Intrusion Detection System / Intrusion Prevention System
- VPN Client
- Stateful Inspection Firewall
Pre-scanning
One thing that must be stressed is that the Yoggie devices are not designed to scan files already on your system. They scan the network traffic coming into your system and prevent anything nasty getting through. Therefore, the first thing you should do before setting up the device is pre-scan your system to make sure it doesn’t already have any viruses, malware etc. Yoggie provide a copy of Kaspersky antivirus for Windows users for you to do the pre-scan. Once the pre-scan is complete, you can uninstall the antivirus software and continue with the installation.
Installation
It’s a very simple process to get up and running. Firstly, you install the device driver supplied. You can also download it from the Yoggie web site if you’d prefer to get the latest version. Installation advises you that the device should not yet be connected, so if you’ve been too keen and have already plugged it in, be sure to remove it before continuing.
Once the software installation is complete, it’s time to re-boot your system. After the re-boot, you can plug the device in. You will then be taken through the registration process. The Pico comes with a 12 month subscription and is then $30 per year, but bear in mind this is for constant updates throughout the subscription period for not only the antivirus element, but also the other protection provided by the unit.
And that’s about it! Once installed, you can disable the Windows firewall, as that is now handled by the Pico, again freeing up some of those precious CPU cycles.
Using the Pico
The Pico is a little self-contained computer that pretty much looks after itself. It automatically updates itself with firmware, antivirus definitions etc as and when it needs to.
The device has 3 LED indicators to keep you informed about what it’s up to. These represent:
- Power – so you know it’s connected and running
- Threat indicator – this flashes to show something unpleasant is happening and that the Pico is dealing with it
- Update indicator – this flashes when the device is updating itself
As well as the 3 LED’s, you can also open up a Management Console via the icon in the Windows Task Bar. This opens your default web browser, asking you for the username and password you entered during the initial setup. Once entered, you’re shown the current status, as shown below:
From the Management Console, you can alter all of the various settings of the device. The initial page of the settings is a simple slider, allowing you to select between Low, Medium and High policies, each one offering a different level of protection. I used Medium, which seems to provide the best level of protection and usability. If you wish, you can also alter the settings for individual elements of protection. For instance, you can set up web filtering to prevent browsing of adult material (so it’s also useful for parental control), or you can block, say, FTP ports. You really do have complete control over what is allowed into your system.
The Management Console also allows you to check a number of different logs to get detailed data about exactly what, if anything, has attempted to access your system. It also shows you the current status of your subscription and there’s a simple one-click button which confirms that the protection is working as expected.
Performance
The whole point of this device from a flight simmers perspective is to free up your system so it can give you the best experience possible with the simulator. In this respect, the Pico performs flawlessly. With the Pico in place and looking after my network connections, there is no discernible impact when running a simulator. In fact, if anything, it appears to be a little smoother. This may be down to being able to safely disable the software firewall, which would be consuming some CPU cycles.
I tested Flight Simulator X, Flight Simulator 2004 and X-Plane and the result was the same for each of them. Frame rates achieved were identical to those achieved with no software virus protection or other security software running locally.
Loading web pages can take a little longer than without the Pico. This is understandable, as everything being loaded is going through the device to check it is safe. It is certainly no slower than using a software solution and is faster than many I have tried in the past. On the odd occasion, Pico seems to stall when trying to load a page, showing a message from the device saying it’s unable to load, but in all cases where that happened (only 3 or 4 times during the review period), a simple refresh of the page loaded it correctly. That’s a small price to pay for this level of protection.
Cost
Talking of prices, we must now cover what the Pico is going to cost you. Bear in mind you’re buying a stand-alone computer here, with 12 levels of protection, that is going to enable you to remove a lot of those resource hungry applications you probably have running at the moment. With that build up, you’re probably guessing it’s expensive. Well, it depends how you look at it!
The Pico as reviewed here currently costs US $126. It’s usually $149, but they currently have a sale on, so if you’re thinking of getting one, now may be the time. The price also includes the subscription for the first year.
Now, that may sound a lot compared to a software solution, but then you’re getting so much more than a software solution would provide. Perhaps the best way to consider it is that you could easily spend a lot more than that on a new graphics card, or new memory in an effort to improve your systems performance. The Pico may well give you a similar performance hike, but will also be protecting you from the outside world.
An easy way for you to check if you’re likely to see a performance increase is to disconnect your Ethernet cable or wireless, uninstall all of your current Internet protection software (make sure you uninstall it, not just disable it. Disabling it will likely still leave many processes running), disable any firewalls etc and see what you get. I’d be amazed if you didn’t see some significant improvement.
Conclusion
This one’s a keeper, for sure. It provides a solution for the problem of keeping your system protected whilst freeing up your system to do what you want it to do and it does so admirably.
Yoggie provide a number of other similar products. The Pico tested here is easily carried from one system to the next, so is ideal if you’re on the move. They also provide solutions for home and small networks.
I can wholeheartedly recommend the Yoggie Pico to anyone who wants to perform the seemingly contradictory tasks of keeping their systems safe and allowing them to get the very best from their system.
My thanks go to Yoggie for providing the review copy.
You may also be interested in these posts
