Yoggie Gatekeeper Pro is an interesting new take on the perennial problem of using personal firewalls to secure individual PCs. It is a Linux-based USB device that serves as a full-blown firewall, VPN gateway and integrated antivirus/Web filter gateway. All of this capability is packed into a form factor that is approximately the size of a pager.
We tested the standalone version to look at the core capabilities of this unique product, but an enterprise version is available that provides centralized management, policy control and reporting.
The policy control is rather basic, but effective. The administrator can open any necessary firewall ports, configure IP addresses and perform other tasks. Some rather pleasant surprises included a fairly effective Web filter control that can block access to malicious Web sites or those that violate corporate policies, such as adult entertainment and gambling sites. It also offers integrated antivirus and automatic updating of the device firmware and virus definitions.
These features are excellent capabilities bundled into the basic product, but we would have liked more fine-grained control.
We ran several Nessus and Nmap scans as well as some custom penetration testing tools against the Yoggie-protected test system to see if we could either take out the device, or tunnel a way through it. The Gatekeeper Pro passed with flying colors and shrugged off the attacks, while allowing the test system continued access to the Internet.
We enabled Web filtering and attempted to hit some dubious Web sites. We were denied access, and all the attempts were logged. Gatekeeper Pro's antivirus likewise caught the EICAR test suite--as expected--as well as the sample viruses we had in the lab. Gatekeeper Pro worked as advertised.
| Configuration/Management | B+ |
Installation is gloriously simple: Plug in the device to the USB port of your PC or laptop, connect your Ethernet port to the clearly labeled PC port on the device using the bundled cable, connect your broadband connection to the Net port, and you're ready to surf the Web. If you plan to use the Gatekeeper Pro with a WLAN connection, you'll need to install a driver.
Configuring the device is accomplished through a built-in Web GUI that will immediately look familiar to anyone who has set up any type of home networking equipment from D-Link or Linksys.
Though effective, the Web GUI is somewhat Spartan. For example, the user is allowed to choose from low, medium or high security levels, but there is no clear explanation of the specific differences between the levels, either in the online help or in the product documentation. We set the security level to high and were able to perform common tasks such as instant messaging, Web browsing and email without any difficulties.
We see a definite sweet spot in the market for Yoggie's offerings, especially the enterprise version in large environments that want to protect disparate endpoints without getting bogged down with configuring individual hosts.
Testing methodology: We installed Yoggie on a Windows XP SP2 test machine. We used the EICAR test suite, along with samples of known viruses, to validate the antivirus capabilities, and used Nmap to verify open and closed ports on the host.
