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Personal Firewall Recommendations


sparhawk

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I was thinking of a personal firewall. I have a linux machine which acts as a firewall, but this is only for the general network. A personal firewall is quite usefull though because it can have rules directly related to certain programs. So I was wondering which on is good enough.

 

My personal choice, after looking through some reviews, is either Jetico or Zonealarm, because both are free, and seemed to have a good rating. Jetico was said to be more advanced but harder for a beginner, so this sounds more interesting, because I don't want one that is so dumbed down that virtually anybody can use it, but doesn't give you finer control.

 

What I also would like to know is if there is something like Tripwire for Windows as well. Monitoring file access and giving you reports on them.

Gerhard

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I have noticed this one also, but on the website there is a big red banner, saying that the guy stopped the support for it, because the reigstrationserver couldn't handle it anymore. That turned me a bit off, because I don't want to registrate somewhere, and also if it is no longer supported, I thought it might not be a good idea, even if it may be good at the moment.

 

http://www.sygate.de/

 

Do you know what this means? The wording is not so clear as to what this guy really means though.

Gerhard

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I also saw that announcement, but I gave it a try anyway, because I didn't want to bother with ZoneAlarm any longer (and I don't care about the non-continued support, I don't need it :)). It'll do for the next few months, maybe I'll switch to something else when it's really outdated.

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tiny personal firewall is Ok but I use kerio personal firewall myself.

You can do things like control which programs can start other programs , which ones can get internet access both incoming and outgoing etc.

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk!

Oops bad sectors damn floppy's!

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Could not give you an answer without knowing which software in particular you were talking about. And that assumes we are familiar with it of course :/

 

Most well written apps like that would tend to overwrite them at startup and sometimes archiving the old ones by compressing them depending on how its set up so they don't usually take much space.

 

If you have xp you can delete everything but these from your root(NOT directories of course)

 

pagefile.sys

hiberfil.sys

ntldr

NTDETECT.COM

boot.ini

 

Do this at your own risk of course :P

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk!

Oops bad sectors damn floppy's!

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I tried that Jetico. It seems to be a bit complex though, and it doesn't really provide enough information. Now I installed that Seagate and this looks fine. Exactly what I was looking for. :)

 

 

I've just jettisioned Jetico, its too friggin complicated and the language they use is suited better to computers talking to one another, not humans. The help files are pretty lean and the different messages I get are cryptic at best.

 

To prove my point, I've just installed Sygate and its easier to use than Jetico, and Sygates in German. I don't speak but a handful of German but I've got it up and running just fine.

Edited by Maximius
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The major reason was because Jetico seems to require you to know each protocol and port by heart. When I run it the first time, it told me that some process tried to access the internet and a specific port. Since I didn't know what it really was I denied it.

After installing Sygate, it told me that it tried to access a network time protocol server and the port was for this NTP, so I allowed it. With Jetico I would have to have known this at the time of the decision, which is a bit dumb IMO. Maybe that's ok for a professional netowrk, because the admin is supposed to know such things, but if the firewall doesn't tell you?

Gerhard

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Sygate is a very good firewall, however as Sygate was bought by Symantec/Norton support for the very light sygate personal firewall (pro) stopped since Symantec decided that customers would have to buy their security suite or firewall which has the same functions but is more bloatware. I'd still love Sygate and would prefer it to any other firewall were it not that there are no updates any more.

 

As to Kerio firewall, well this was also sold since kerio's core business are B2B (more profit) then the home user. It was sold to Sunbelt software, which tends to keep it free, however after having used the simple lay-out and settings of sygate i found this firewall to annoying to set up.

 

As to Zonealarm... well thats the most paranoia firewall around, and its not really good at anything except bloating. I installed it once and it turned out to block programs which i set to allow traffic... so basically i threw it out with the garbage. So now i am back to good old simple sygate, but pretty soon i have to reinstall and will have to find a new firewall as well :(

"Curiouser and Curiouser" cried Alice!"
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Sygate is a very good firewall, however as Sygate was bought by Symantec/Norton support for the very light sygate personal firewall (pro) stopped since Symantec decided that customers would have to buy their security suite or firewall which has the same functions but is more bloatware. I'd still love Sygate and would prefer it to any other firewall were it not that there are no updates any more.

 

As to Kerio firewall, well this was also sold since kerio's core business are B2B (more profit) then the home user. It was sold to Sunbelt software, which tends to keep it free, however after having used the simple lay-out and settings of sygate i found this firewall to annoying to set up.

 

As to Zonealarm... well thats the most paranoia firewall around, and its not really good at anything except bloating. I installed it once and it turned out to block programs which i set to allow traffic... so basically i threw it out with the garbage. So now i am back to good old simple sygate, but pretty soon i have to reinstall and will have to find a new firewall as well :(

 

 

Oh god don't tell me that, I thought sygate was the answer to my prayers..... :(

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