Recommend me a good freeware firewall

[vulturesrow]

Hi all,

The subject title pretty much says it all. I've been running Zone Alarm Personal but Im getting tired of it. My main problem is that it is not quite as configurable as I would like it to be. Open to any suggestions here. Running Windows XP SP2.

TY,
VR

[Swoop]

What sort of configuration options are you looking for? In order to suggest solutions, we'd need to know what it is that you're trying to do that ZoneAlarm isn't allowing.

I personally use a hardware firewall at the internet access point to lock down all incoming traffic, and then use the basic XP firewall to lock down internally. The inbuilt XP firewall is actually pretty solid as a secondary layer of protection.

The most important thing when trying to secure your PC is making sure that all users on your PC and (if applicable) the local network are aware of basic security. e.g., don't open attachments in e-mails unless you know who it's from. Learn to recognise suspect attachments even when it's from friends. Be careful what websites you browse, and so forth.

Additionally, relying on a single point of protection such as a software firewall is not the most secure options. Many malware products these days are able to open backdoors in commonly used software firewalls. Hardware firewalls are immune to this sort of automated attack.

In my opinion, if all you want is to stop potential hack attempts via the internet, then put in a hardware firewall (e.g a router with SPI capabilites) and lock down pretty much all ports. (except those for any services you host, such as the WoW updater) Get a decent anti-virus program on each PC on the home network, and ensure that anti-spyware programs such as Addaware are run regularly. Unfortunately, computer security is not just a matter of installing an anti-virus program and then forgetting about it, it involves use of the (not-so-common) common sense whenever you're e-mailing or using the web.

Sorry for the little rant there, I get a bit passionate about this stuff sometimes. Comes from being a consultant to business clients who don't understand why they shouldn't just open every attachment that comes through to them

[vulturesrow]

This board is awesome.

Swoop,

I appreciate your rant actually and Im a bit of a computer nerd, though I dont do it for a living. As far as to what I actually want to do, I would just like to have more ability to open/close certain ports inside ZoneAlarm Home than it has. I actually do have a router between my cable modem and my 2 computers and pretty much all ports are closed except for a couple that are port forwarded for WoW patching and similar other tasks. My computer is well protected, I use a pretty good variety of malware programs and Im diligent about scans and such. I am looking for a good freeware antivirus though, Ive tried AVG and avast, but I hear good things about F-prot too. Thanks for the response. Hope that helps you answer my original question.

[sna]

please try COMODO
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

it's free and secure (it passes far more leak tests than comercial firewalls).

[Gritz]

Thanks for the tip Siena - I had never heard of that before - but it got an Editor's Choice award from PC Magazine:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1969207,00.asp


-Gritz

[sna]

http://www.matousec.com/projects/win...ts-results.php

much better ;P

"Interpretation of results

The clear winners of our tests are Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4.16.174 and Jetico Personal Firewall 2.0.0.16 beta. Whilst Comodo is the best on its highest security settings, Jetico has the best default settings configuration. On the highest security settings, Comodo passed all leak-tests, Jetico failed against Breakout and pcAudit. These results are excellent! What is more, both firewalls are still in development and we can expect that they will pass all tests in their future versions. Congratulations!

"

[eeffoc]

Get yourself a smoothie...
http://www.smoothwall.org

If you have the spear computer equipment put together a hardware firewall. Like Swoop said;

...if all you want is to stop potential hack attempts via the internet, then put in a hardware firewall...

It runs on a UNIX/Linux platform and the nice thing is that if you don't know much (or anything about UNIX for that matter) you can still have it configured and running in no time at all. It is setup to have all the monitoring and configuration done through a web interface.

I've replaced my old D-Link router with this and I have had no problems with it and it works fine with WoW.



and yes, its free to use.

[sparks]

Well after making a mess a few years ago...I think that zone has cleaned up their act..so zonealarm might be a decent free firewall.

If you are looking for advanced filtering, port forewarding and things you won't find it in a free product that I have seen.

BUT I am going to go look at Comodo and jetico... thanks for the tip and link on these.


one issue that a lot of the reviews and comparisons fail to check is the resourses used by these products.. Some are 60+ megs just to load and get bogged down by constantly do state inspections ...its fancy but is it needed? Why did my pings go thru the roof?

the problem is like my friend faced with a couple of firewalls he has purchased...they treat the user as an idiot and half the aps it passes and the others it blocks...sometimes he gets warnings and gets asked if he wants to let something thru others get blocked or passed with NO user interaction.
I gues if its a known company they just say oh yea.. dumb *** user might want to block a windows media log being sent to the MS gods.