Zone Alarm is a joke.

[JJ_]

I am fully aware that they call home and do not rely on a infected system to tell me that it is communicating out.

A software firewall useless on an untrusted network? Wow this is funny....you clearly have absolutely no clue about anything. This made me chuckle a bit. Please tell me more.....The software firewall bocks communication from anything outside of the computer by default. No other configuration needed. You need to create rules to allow communication with other network computers. Even the windows firewall wants to believe everything other than the host pc is hostile. I am not even touching the VPN comment, it doesn't belong in this convo.

Let me rephrase that. A software firewall is not entirely useless on an unsecured network but lets put it this way, I would be more concerned about encrypting my outgoing traffic.

No I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling running a software firewall and call me paranoid or whatever you like but I like to keep tabs on what can and cannot access the internet on my personal computer(s).

HawkMan your post consisted of too much nonsense to merit a response

[sc302 Veteran]

Alright since you want to go there, what is not encrypted? Most sites that require a password is encrypted via ssl. Go ahead and get me on my searches and my chat that is meaningless. My banks are all ssl encrypted. Anything that I need to do for my company is VPN secured that could be deemed sensitive. You are actually pretty secure simply by breathing.

[HawkMan]

HawkMan your post consisted of too much nonsense to merit a response

Funny, since you repeated the same thing yourself, except ignoring the key fact that once you're compromised, your firewall is also.

[paxa]

despite being a resource hog. back when i used circa 2004. i was always frustrated with it. it hogged the pc resources and offered little or no protection whatsoever. back then i just uninstalled and let my computer be fully "open" to the network. windows firewall is not great, but it works. but nothing beats a router with a custom firmware and well configured

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

It depends on the type of threat being countered. For example, the firewall software I'm using things like specific options to detect and block traffic from network worms, warn about ARP and DNS poisoning and a few other features beyond a simple binary "yes/no" block of packets entering or leaving the network stack.

I think Windows Firewall provides pretty good basic protection, but I like having more fine-grained options to protect against threats as well as the alerts my firewall provides.

By the way, as a disclaimer, I actually work for a company which makes a software-based firewall, but the things I've mentioned above are not specific in particular to my employer's software. Most?if not all?third-party software firewalls do this.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Wouldn't Windows' built-in firewall on an up-to-date installation do the job just fine in those situations? At our school and dorm network for example all clients are isolated and can't communicate with each other.

[TPreston]

despite being a resource hog. back when i used circa 2004. i was always frustrated with it. it hogged the pc resources and offered little or no protection whatsoever. back then i just uninstalled and let my computer be fully "open" to the network. windows firewall is not great, but it works. but nothing beats a router with a custom firmware and well configured

TMG 2010 does :shifty:

[remixedcat]

[.Neo]

Zone Alarm is a joke.

Which is no laughing matter.

[sc302 Veteran]

Web filter....

lol

[cork1958]

I have windows firewall enabled but that doesn't allow you to block applications from calling home (as far as i'm aware) so i have zonealarm too. I use avast antivirus as MSE is awful, it misses so many viruses, can't remove viruses and has loads of false detections, can't believe others don't hate MSE too.

I may try a different firewall app soon though.

Use this along with Windows firewall to monitor outgoing traffic, if you must!

Make sure to get the free version,

http://www.sphinx-so...ista/order.html

[paxa]

TPreston...ok i give you that....but it could be a little too much for your standard user.

[Orange Battery]

I am a lazy user who is concerned about security. I have used ZA since about 2003 and moved to Pro in 2005. I am currently a ZA pro subscriber and it has given me some system performance problems in the past but nothing I couldn't get past. The problem with me, as I have already said, Im lazy.

I feel ZA Pro gives me decent security, I always pay attention to alerts it gives me and therefore I hope Im safe as i can be with a commercial customer product in this price range.

Im going to keep a note of this thread as it will be interesting to see if it is worth the investment in time in order to get a firewall that performs better than ZA Pro.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

You're not lazy, Orange, if you can get past all the blocking of every app on your system.

[sc302 Veteran]

You're not lazy, Orange, if you can get past all the blocking of every app on your system.

:yes: But in all reality it isn't every app, just the ones that make your computer useful on the internet (well not exactly the apps, but sites that the apps connect to)....you can play solitare usually (I haven't seen that blocked), though you may not be able to play any online games even when you disable the firewall completely.

[remixedcat]

just use a good condom

[sc302 Veteran]

why? do you have too many illegitimate children floating around? It is better to spread the seeds.

[Growled Member]

I really don't see the need to pay for a software firewall on Windows 7 and above. It was probably needed on earlier versions of Windows, but not anymore. The built in firewall in Windows 7 works great for me. If need be you can use a free frontend like Windows Firewall Control.

[+Warwagon MVC]

That's the job of your AV and heuristics. firewalls are to protect from targeted attacks or remote attacks. at the point when outbund traffic matters, it's to late and the virus will, if it's a decent one, have disabled your FW anyway.

a FW has a purpose, it's not what you think it is.

Actually sandboxing is better protection. As far as Zero day protection, I think MSE is terrible.

[HawkMan]

MSE is terrible compared to what, it's virus module is as good as Norton, but Norton is so much more than just the AV which makes it a far better total package, as far as sandboxing, it's one of those false protection cushions that make people think they're more protected than they are. relying on sandboxing for your protection is a terrible idea, and even so it won't protect you against many of the very clever phishing and Trojan attacks that are out today. it'll just protect against certain viruses.

[sc302 Veteran]

that all depends on how your sandbox works. If you put your whole os in a vm session and constantly restore the snapshot, you are technically safe and will always have a fresh copy.

[+Warwagon MVC]

MSE is terrible compared to what, it's virus module is as good as Norton, but Norton is so much more than just the AV which makes it a far better total package, as far as sandboxing, it's one of those false protection cushions that make people think they're more protected than they are. relying on sandboxing for your protection is a terrible idea, and even so it won't protect you against many of the very clever phishing and Trojan attacks that are out today. it'll just protect against certain viruses.

I'm referring to something like sandboxie for sandboxing your web browsing. Now if you download something and let it out of the sandbox and run it, sure you will get infected. I'm talking about using sandboxie in protected against drive-by / zero day exploits where the infection is contained inside the sandboxie sandbox.

I think it's a hell of a lot better than just relying on AV. Personally I run Avast, Malwarebytes, Sandboxie. I removed Java from my system and use flashblock to so flash content does not load automatically.

[HawkMan]

Meanwhile other people just want to use their computers and are not getting infected without being paranoid sandboxed.

Also pretty much all banks here use Java to log in (since they all use a security system called BankID, which uses i, and allows you to digitally sign documents with a legally binding electronic signature), so removing java is out of the question.

and there's always a way out of a sandbox, that's why they're called trojans. Well unless you go with the VM OS, but that's just plain ridiculous.

common sense beats any sandbox. common sense and MSE is enough for most people, and Norton will keep you safe even without common sense in most cases.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Meanwhile other people just want to use their computers and are not getting infected without being paranoid sandboxed.

Also pretty much all banks here use Java to log in (since they all use a security system called BankID, which uses i, and allows you to digitally sign documents with a legally binding electronic signature), so removing java is out of the question.

and there's always a way out of a sandbox, that's why they're called trojans. Well unless you go with the VM OS, but that's just plain ridiculous.

common sense beats any sandbox. common sense and MSE is enough for most people, and Norton will keep you safe even without common sense in most cases.

That's also why they are called drive by downloads. You go to a harmless site has has recently been compromised like say neowin (could happen). It then takes advantage of a zero day vulnerability on your system. Then the AV just so happens to miss it and you are now infected. In the case of a sandbox its more than likey contained. Thus no harm was done to the system. In this case just going to a trusted website got the computer infected. it had nothing to do with common sense.

In the case with you needing java, you are surfing the web with something that ALWAYS has vulnerabilities. that the bad guys know about and haven't used yet. So at the very least I would run quickjava if I HAD to use java, which let me turn it on for the bank but off the rest of the time.

Surfing the web with Java enabled and the word common sense cancel each other out. Because in this case you can use the worlds best common sense and still get infected.

[spaceelf]

That's also why they are called drive by downloads. You go to a harmless site has has recently been compromised like say neowin (could happen). It then takes advantage of a zero day vulnerability on your system. Then the AV just so happens to miss it and you are now infected. In the case of a sandbox its more than likey contained. Thus no harm was done to the system. In this case just going to a trusted website got the computer infected. it had nothing to do with common sense.

In the case with you needing java, you are surfing the web with something that ALWAYS has vulnerabilities. that the bad guys know about and haven't used yet. So at the very least I would run quickjava if I HAD to use java, which let me turn it on for the bank but off the rest of the time.

Surfing the web with Java enabled and the word common sense cancel each other out. Because in this case you can use the worlds best common sense and still get infected.

Assuming you visit dangerous sites, don't keep MSE up to date, don't keep Windows up to date, or Java or Flash or whatever, yeah, you're in danger.

Anyone else? That's where the common sense comes in.

And just for the record (though I'm no fan of Java) it's not that insecure anymore http://secunia.com/a...statistics_2012

[HawkMan]

In the case with you needing java, you are surfing the web with something that ALWAYS has vulnerabilities. that the bad guys know about and haven't used yet. So at the very least I would run quickjava if I HAD to use java, which let me turn it on for the bank but off the rest of the time.

Surfing the web with Java enabled and the word common sense cancel each other out. Because in this case you can use the worlds best common sense and still get infected.

Sorry, but you're sprouting ignorant bs from the "always has vulnerabilities" and to the end. Come back when you have an education and know what pure talking about. Btw your browser, our sandbox, your OS, your mail app, and everything else on your computer Alison"always have vulnerabilities" by your classification, sure no one knows what they are or that they are there, but they are.

Also Norton will in fact stop zero day vulnerabilities in drive by downloads. They have the top rating score on zero day test, and stopped everything.