Vaccine USB Offers Inoculation Automation
Listing for about $499 with one year of software and virus definition updates, the stick is intended for industrial PCs onto which software installation is impossible, impractical or might even void the warranty. According to Hagiwara, most such machines are running Windows XP, and can therefore fully exploit Windows autorun functionality. Annual updates will cost $299.
In addition to its virus definitions, scanning software and documentation, the stick also is home to an implementation of Windows XP Embedded as well as the company's patented virtual CD software, which deploys a locked volume from which the virus software executes. All together, these apps occupy less than one-fifth of the stick's 1GB total memory. The remaining 879 MB can be used for storage of scan logs (the default location of the unit we received) or for any reason.
The Vaccine USB operates as one might expect. Simply plug it into any 1.1 or 2.0 USB slot (except those on a USB expansion board, which are not supported), and it attempts to emulate a CD ROM drive and execute a scan from there. Impediments to automatically scanning might include Windows' autorun from CD function disabled, prompts for credentials, or another Windows-related SNAFU.
Our first tested system was running 32-bit XP Professional, and the Vaccine USB appeared to work flawlessly, with a steady green LED indicating connection with the host PC and alternating red and blue LEDs indicating a scan in progress. By default, the device will scan all files on all local drives. Scanning the test system's 62,000 files required about 90 minutes. An included utility permits changes to the default to scan just critical system files or a set of user-defined files and volumes. These settings are written to the USB device. Start-up options are scan only (default), virus cleaning with ending prompt, and virus cleaning without ending prompt. Updates to virus definitions must be performed manually.
The CRN Test Center received a preproduction unit for testing this week, so we'll reserve our recommendation of Vaccine USB as well as our criticisms of clunky dialog-box wording and other rough edges. We're told that upon release, administrators will be able to more easily select the destination of log files (currently that's done by editing an .ini file). A bootable version is planned in the next release.