Things tend to appear in clumps and for whatever reason, this week it’s interesting Linux based appliances. A colleague forwarded along information on this interesting device, the Pico Pro, from Yoggie Security Solutions yesterday. Effectively, this is a USB device with an onboard processor in addition to the expected storage that acts as a personal security device. The images below show the internals of the device:



This device has many different security applications working in concert to protect your computer: firewall, vpn, network address translation, intrusion prevention and detection, proxies (ftp, http, smtp, and pop), anti-* (spam, spyware, and phishing), URL CAT, and coordinating frameworks for the software. It’s effectively a Linux-based security appliance on a USB fob. Pretty cool.

While I understand that Yoggie was trying for a specific look and form factor, I do take issue with the fact that the device is invasive as it replaces low-level communications drivers in the operating system with Yoggie drivers that divert traffic to the device. Subsequently, the device only functions with Windows devices at this time. I would have much preferred an inline device that creates a private network with no invasive software meaning it’s cross platform to start. In fairness, it looks like Yoggie has a SOHO device that does such a thing.

You might expect these things to cost an arm and a leg, but they start quite reasonably priced at $179.