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Firewalls

A firewall protects your computer from incoming connections. Without a firewall there are many ways in which someone could connect to a PC without the user of the pc being aware, and this would allow a hacker access to files and even the ability to run software on the PC. Software firewalls (i.e. those listed here) will generally also offer control over outgoing connections, this means that they will notify you of which applications are trying to make a connection to the internet (or local network) and allow you control over which should be allowed to do so. Serious thought should also be given to installing anti-virus software, which is equally if not more important.

The following software firewall products are available free for for personal use. (A search of the web will reveal other commercial firewall solutions.) There may be some conditions attached to their use and the definition of "personal use" may vary between products, so check their terms and conditions:

ZoneAlarm - Download Free Firewall Software

ZoneAlarm is a firewall program that protects your computer from hackers while you are online. Free for personal use, with free software updates. Windows Vista and Windows XP. Very effective and easy to use. ZoneAlarm also provide a suite of protection tools, including anti-virus.

ZoneAlarm has the concept of trusted and non-trusted networks. This is very useful for anyone with their own local network (which a growing number of home users now have), because it allows different rules to be created for an application according to whether it is trying to access the trusted or non-trusted network. For example an application could be configured to allow access over a local area network but not to the internet.

The Professional version (which is not free) supports additional features such as support for connection sharing.

Sunbelt Personal Firewall

Sunbelt Personal Firewall used to be called the Kerio Personal Firewall (KPF). Kerio was going to discontinue it, but Sunbelt acquired it from Kerio to save the product. Sunbelt then changed the name to Sunbelt Personal Firewall. At the same time the firewall ceased to be free and is now available for a small one-off charge.

Sunbelt Personal Firewall represents smart, easy-to-use personal security technology that fully protects personal computers against hackers and internal misuse.

The default configuration also blocks advertisements on web pages. Whilst this could be useful if connecting on a slow modem (slower than 28.8kbps), it also denies revenue to websites that rely on income from advertisements to offset costs (such as this site).

One nice feature is that it blocks pop-ups and pop-unders. These are the annoying pages that open automatically either when you visit a site or when you leave one. Unlike advertising on a page, pop-ups and pop-unders are an "in-your-face" form of advertising and are almost universally disliked (except presumably by the webmasters who use them).

Another "mixed-blessing" feature is that it warns when one application launches another. As with applications trying to connect to the network/internet you can individually allow or deny or create a permanent rule to allow or deny. This feature has great potential because if you were to become infected by a worm then it might give you an indication that something was wrong - for example if an application you use suddenly starts wanting to launch another application when previously it didn't then this might be an indication of a possible worm or virus infection. However setting a rule to allow an application to launch another (which is required because many applications launch helper applications) is an all-or-none affaire - you can either specify a permanent rule that an application can launch ANY other application or have it ask you each time. A better approach would have been for it to allow you to specify a rule saying which applications it was allowed to launch, as it stands should those files for which you have created rules later become infected with a virus then Sunbelt would fail to pick it up. However this isn't a substitute for anti-virus software and with up to date anti-virus software this shouldn't be necessary.

Filseclab Personal Firewall

Filseclab Personal Firewall is a free firewall. One thing which which sets this firewall apart from the others is that you can buy the software source code, so in theory you could then compile and customise it yourself.

http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

A very professional looking and free firewall. Supports Windows Vista, Windows XP and 2000 (not Windows 9x).

No apparent limitations on use. Most free firewalls are limited to one per household, non-commercial use, but neither of these restrictions apply to the Comodo firewall.

Windows XP and Windows Vista come with an in-built firewall. Whilst this should prevent against many external threats to your PC it does not:

protect against malicious software that might already be resident on your PC from communicating with servers on the internet. The firewall products listed above will allow you to block outgoing traffic like this.
protect against network traffic on a local area (it assumes all local area network traffic is safe). This means that if you run a small network at home or in an office, that it will not protect against any attacks from malicious software on the other office/home PCs. Whilst most firewall products will normally assume local area network traffic to be safe, this can be configured - the XP firewall does not allow this to be configured.