You will never forget the day you became a victim of ransomware. Antispam, antivirus and web filtering help, but ultimately the biggest threat to the computer is yourself. For example, you try out a game or you use an unknown USB stick. If you perform these actions in an isolated environment, you run no risk. That is possible with Hysolate.
It is not wrong to have a healthy suspicion about unknown applications that you download from the Internet. You could go from being less paranoid with all those disturbing messages. The solution to running such software without running the risk of damaging your base system is an isolated environment for high-risk applications. Even if the application contains malware, your regular system is never affected. There are already some solutions to create a sandbox environment for this. A very user-friendly variant has recently been added: Hysolate.
Correct free version
Hysolate comes in two variants: there is a free version for home users and an enterprise edition for businesses. Hysolate is unclear about the price of the latter; you must contact the representative in London. That’s going to take a while. He’s talking about package licenses for fifteen, twenty-five, fifty or a hundred computers. Annual prices can be negotiated, which fluctuate around 400 euros per person.
Is Hysolate not therefore interesting for our readers? Anyway, the free, ad-free version has been running like a charm for us for several weeks now. You just need to download the correct free version. on www.hysolate.com click on Download Hysolate Free. Then you come to a web page with two free versions: Hysolate Free for Isolating Endpoint Threats and Hysolate Free for Isolating Sensitive Access. Choose the first (left) option, otherwise you will download a package that does not contain half of the functions that we describe here.
Register
To download the free version, you need to register. You will then receive a download link by email. The installation file is approximately 334 MB in size. Open the exe file and run it. After the installation you have to enter your email address again, you will receive a verification code via email.
After that, the setup asks if you also want to install the browser extension that automatically redirects untrusted, high-risk websites to the isolated environment. Do that! The extension only works in Google Chrome, by the way. So if Chrome isn’t on your computer, skip this extension.
Not for Windows Home
It is important to know that you need a computer with decent specifications. Your PC must have at least 8 GB of memory, an SSD and an Intel Core i5 processor or higher. In addition, the installer drops out when you install the free version on Windows Home. You must have Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise.
Purple desktop
Hysolate is automatically activated when you restart your computer. The program proposes to take a guided tour. This tour only consists of three screens, which argues for the user-friendliness of this program.
In fact, you just need to know that you’re on Windows Key+Alt+Left Arrow or Arrow Right must press to go to the isolated environment or to return to the regular Windows environment. We call the latter environment the host. The purple Hysolate desktop already contains a few applications, such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Notepad++ and 7zip. So you can already surf the web, download zip packages and install programs.
To change gear
The software has an interesting option if you work with two screens. In the secure environment, when you right-click on the Hysolate icon in the system tray, you can access Show Workspace select three options. Hysolate thus appears on both screens, on one screen or on the other screen.
By the way, there are three ways to switch environments. The first is already known to us: Windows Key+Alt+Left Arrow or Arrow Right. The second option is to right click on the Hysolate icon. This will take you to the button Switch Environment. The third option is through the shortcut on your desktop.
Workspaces
When you open Windows Explorer in the safe workspace, you will see Workspace Desktop, Workspace Downloads and Workspace Documents instead of the desktop, the Downloads folder and the Documents folder. Hysolate is primarily intended for people who work in networks and who need to continue to have access to documents, applications, websites and peripherals.
Hysolate’s philosophy sees the computers of a network as endpoints that can switch to separate environments through the software. Hysolate is a solution that applies the isolation technology contained in Microsoft’s Windows Sandbox to create a permanently isolated usage structure.
Open in secured area
Hysolate integrates some interesting features into the regular Windows 10 system. Suppose you have received a suspicious file via email or in some other way, you can copy it from your regular system to the isolated environment or even open it directly in the Hysolate Workspace.
When this file is on your desktop, right click on the file and choose Copy to Workspace or Open in Workspace. There is also a shared clipboard between the host and the isolated environment. Use the regular Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste files and even folders. This works both ways.
USB sticks
Hysolate is very careful with USB sticks. There are many known cases of USB drives that turned out to be malware spreaders. When the program is active, it immediately springs into action the moment you plug such a drive into the PC.
A pop-up will appear asking if you want to open the flash drive in the Hysolate Workspace. You can then view the files in the Hysolate workspace and after verifying them, you can copy them to your host system.
Website Redirect
If you added the Google Chrome extension during installation, you can activate this extension while surfing in the normal Windows environment. In this way you can read in a few keywords how Hysolate estimates the opened web page.
The ComputerTotaal website places Hysolate in the categories: Business, Education and Self-Help and Information Technology. Below that, you can decide to immediately open the web page in the isolated environment. The extension allows you to set the browser so that high risk (phishing, hacking, malicious extension) and medium risk (gambling, adult content, illegal content) sites are always opened in the Hysolate Workspace.
Health check
If you right-click on the icon in the system tray, you can Settings also indicate when Hysolate goes into rest. This is especially important for laptops to save their battery. By default, this is set to thirty seconds. You can also read the status of the software here. You see whether Hysolate Workspace is active and up-to-date and you monitor the health (health check) of the safety system.
