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» MEDIA (4) securespot manage Video Interview with Dlink during CES 2006 Securespot from the front. About the size of a deck of cards. It's small but delivers a lot of value overall.

This is an unfinished mblog that I'm making public just so you can see the features of the FiringSquad media-blogs.

When I first saw the SecureSpot at CES in January 06, I thought it was one of the coolest devices to hit the consumer market in quite some time. In fact, so much so that we recorded a special video presentation, although it never aired because we forgot to post it....doh. But that's ok, cause now I've posted it here.

Anyway. I waited for months for the SecureSpot to be released and exchanged multiple emails with the DLink employees who promised to send me a review sample once they became available. Unfortunately, by the time the SecureSpot finally did become available, all of my contacts had moved on to other jobs, retired, or passed away.

I've got 4 PC's in the house and they are used by my wife and kids and are connected to the net through a wireless router that also handles NAT. I've blocked most of the dangerous ports to protect our systems against hackers. Even with updated antivirus software loaded on all the PC's, I've had to rebuild two of the systems from scratch due to spyware that had found it's way into the boxes. It's no fun at all trying to remove this nasty stuff from your wife's computer while she leans over your shoulder threatening bodily harm if you lose any of her data (10 years worth of digital pictures).

The Securespot is supposed to simplify your life by providing one central management package to maintain your anti-virus and spyware software across multiple computers.

So a couple of weeks ago I ordered two, one for myself and one for a friend who has the same network security issues I face in his home.

My problems started as soon as plugged in the first device, neither device would work on my network. After an hour of checking cables and connections and reading the online help guides, I finally gave in and contacted their tech support. The tech support was easy to reach and their first recommendation was for me to upgrade the firmware because the version shipped would not support my cable modem. I tried both devices, but was unable to get either to accept the firmware upgrades. The technician, although friendly enough decided that he would have to escalate the problem and so before hanging up, gave me a 14 digit ticket number and hung up. Not quite ready to give up, I kept trying different approaches and finally figured out that if I disconnected the Lan port on the securespot then it would accept the firmware upgrade.

The next step was to download the thin client onto each of the four computers. The thin client install requires that all other antivirus software be removed, so once I cleaned off the multitude of old software from each of the 4 home PC's the install went relatively smoothly.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the device actually worked as advertised, blocking the web sites that would be considered offensive to my kids. The securespot is even sophisticated enough to differentiate the good parts of Craigslist from the bad parts (Oh, you didn't know about the bad parts of Craigslist???). I thought I had it all worked out so I called it a day and went off to bed.

The next morning all the computers in the house had the same message, invalid thin client license and was locked out of web access. I tried rebooting the PC's and restarting the securespot to no avail. After about 30 minutes of messing around with the device I resigned myself to unloading the thin client from all the PC's and changing the network access in the management options to allow all PC's to operate on the network without the thin client install. Unfortunately, without the thin client the device has limited capabilities. I'd have to come back to this hiccup when I had a little more time.

About a week later I decided it was time to take another shot at the Securelink. Afterall, somewhere along the line, my laptop had been infected with Antispyware Soldier and after hours of trying to remove it, I decided that the I'd be better off protecting the rest of my network before it too became infected with similar nasty software.

I reinstalled the thin client and proceeded to work through all the small nuances on my PC, the one that is probably the most complicated. I figured if I could get mine working then the rest would be a breeze.

The first major problem I encountered was a conflict with Outlook. Everytime an email would arrive or leave my system would freeze for 3-5 seconds. The only way to avoid this freezing, was to disable the Spam Blocking features on the securespot. I decided I needed more help, but instead of calling this time, I used DLink's online live chat. I explained the situation to the tech, he ran it through his database of errors and couldn't come up with any solutions. So, he said he would escelate the issue and they would get back to me. Surprisingly enough, two day later my phone rings, and it is a DLink technician who's called to help trouble shoot. We discussed the issue at length and determined that in fact there was a problem with my existing Spam software called QURB. Once I disabled QURB, all my problems went away. Except that I find QURB works better than the Spam blocker software on the securelink, so I left the Spam blocking features disabled.

The popup blocker feature was, and continues to be a headache. Although I've disabled it from the management console, it continues to interfere with normal web browsing. Whereas the popup blocker on my Google toolbar seems to possess some intelligence about what to block, the securelink disables 90% of all URL's. Not only that, but sometimes it allows the new blank browser window to open which is sometimes very difficult to close.

Clearly there are some hurdles associated with the DLink SecureSpot. My wife continues to complain that I've intentionally done something to slow down her PC because I'm jealous of her more powerful processor, but in the end, the protection the device offers seems to be effective and the price was right on.

External Link: http://www.dlink.com/products/securespot/