Firewall Security - Secure your computer with a secure software based firewall

Computer Firewalls are everywhere! This crucial tool for personal and company protection has over the past few years experienced a massive growth in customers.

As with any winning concept this has also produced a fair amount of competitors. With network security becoming more and more important there are increasingly additional companies offering solutions for personal protection.

Unfortunately not all of these companies offer equal protection for the same price. Additionally there is little to no relation between price and quality of the product resulting in the more expensive products often being little more than a marketing scam.

On the other had this also means that a quality product can also be obtained for practically free if we manage to find the right firewall through all the hype.

To identify a firewall that will prove useful to us in a home setting we will breakdown and look at four of the more popular firewalls. Even though there are many firewalls to select from with each offering their unique benefits, and some possibly better than the ones described below, these are considered the “best of the best” by the public. Each one of the firewalls described below has the benefit of extensive experience in the field and has the capability to provide service should something go wrong.

I will not try to delve into the technical details of each firewall, which would be a far longer and far more theoretical article than is intended here. This is mostly related to the fact that there are multiple techniques of protecting us, each of which requiring a good insight into various networking concepts (TCP/IP to name but one).

With the flood of internet firewalls targeting not only private users we should take the time to make a difference between two different types of firewall:

1. Personal
2. Professional

Personal Firewall

Personal firewalls generally are intended to serve the home user. Anything from our personal PCs and private networks to a small company can rely on personal firewalls to provide a secure network. Personal firewalls are not intended to survive the professional hackers and attacks suffered by large companies such as Microsoft, but they often prevent most of the problems.

The firewalls discussed here will focus on the personal aspect; if as a company you are interested in purchasing a firewall it is recommended that you seek the aid of a good consultant. Personal firewalls are generally inexpensive (up to$50) and free licenses are often offered to the home users that need the firewall solely for personal use.

Professional Firewall

The professional firewall is used in larger companies and is usually installed on a separate PC on the company's network. In combination with the professional firewall and a specially adapted computer designed to be 'strengthened' against outside attacks they provide optimal security for companies. Naturally specially designed hardware and software has its price and assuming that we are not looking to make a heavy investment (up to $30,000) we will disregard the professional firewalls in this chapter.

Norton Personal Firewall
McAfee Personal Firewall Plus
Zone Alarm Pro
Sygate Personal Firewall

Norton Personal Firewall

Norton has extensive experience in the field of firewalls and offers a range of products that can be useful from the novice to the professional.

The firewall is an easy to install and easy to use program that has put much effort into making the life of the user as straightforward as possible.

Norton provides firewalls that are by default set to block all incoming and outgoing traffic, whenever a program attempts to connect to or from your PC you will be prompted if you want to let the program access the network.

Blocking Java and ActiveX components that can be automatically downloaded from web sites in addition to preventing us from uploading private information to the web are all part of the Norton Personal Firewall. The included pop-up blocker feature is especially easy to configure and control providing you with the benefits of a good pop-up stopper as well.

Unfortunately like most Norton products the beauty and smooth feel of the interface comes at the expense of resource usage. The Norton firewall if installed on a slower system can take a big and noticeable chunk out of the way your computer performs.

Norton provides a complete virus scanner package that works excellently with the firewall (but unfortunately is an equally large drain on our PC's resources).

McAfee Personal Firewall Plus

Mcafee is the second company that has taken the leap from virus protection to the art of 'firewalling'. Having had extensive experience in virus protection their step towards firewalls was only natural and this is clearly reflected by the features McAfee Personal Firewall Plus has to offer.

Mcafee allows its advanced users to dig deep into settings adding multiple levels of protection to their network.

The firewall also offers a feature to 'backtrack', allowing you to find out who made (or attempted to make) a connection to your PC.

Despite a very solid interface and good protection McAfee unfortunately isn't always as clear to navigate. A few dialogs that are difficult to understand and pop-ups that are unnecessarily alarming like a virus detection warning for outside your PC (which means there 'is' a new virus but you don't have it) are not very comforting to those who are new to firewalls.

With a little bit of knowledge of firewalls however Mcafee offers excellent protection and works wonders in conjunction with the virus scanner from the same company.

Zone Alarm Pro

Zone Labs Zonealarm provides a dedicated firewall package. With specialization in network protection zone alarm has always been very capable in providing good network security.

Maybe not as graphically oriented as the other firewalls, but it makes up for this with an easy to use interface and very good network security.

Add-blocking features and good e-mail protection provides a limited amount of virus protection that makes this firewall a good addition to any home network.

Zonealarm shines through with easy installation and configuration. It also only causes a medium load on your system making it a worthy choice for low-end systems.

Sygate Personal Firewall

Out of the labs of Sygate comes this excellent firewall package. With long-standing expertise in the business of protection and interconnection the Sygate firewalls are designed for easy installation and use.

With protection methods that allow limited virus protection (against Trojans) some features to prevent DOS attacks (causing your system not to be able to reach the Internet anymore) and anti hijacking features the Sygate personal firewall provides a nice all-round package. Especially for home users that have a small network, additional programs designed to run with the Sygate firewalls will work well to keep your network connected and safe at the same time. The actual system load for this firewall is surprisingly low making it an ideal choice for lower-end systems.