Firewalls are important to prevent trojans, DOS attacks,
and hackers from getting into your system. Read more
about this in the Security Tips Section.
At the moment there are lots of free downloadable firewalls,
all of which will do a better job than the pre-installed
Windows XP firewall. Which is the best? Which
is the Easiest to Install? Which do I recommend?
For years I used Tiny Personal Firewall, but I've switched
to Sygate personal firewall and I think it's the best free
firewall on the market at the moment. Many people
use ZoneAlarm and originally this section was going to be
a ZoneAlarm demonstration, but I had to weigh which one
I found better and which one I would install on someone's
computer if they asked me...the clear choice for me was
Sygate's Personal Firewall. It runs like most firewalls,
but I found it to be more stable than ZA, less of a resource
hog, and while it gives up some things in the way of an
easy display, it works effectively and doesn't crash on
me, which I've had ZA do on more than one occasion.
So, I'm going to recommend Sygate Firewall and give some
brief instruction on how to install and operate it.
- First
you need to download it here : Sygate
Personal Firewall
- It
will be a file named spf.exe, just double click this
program and it will install and then reboot
- Once
you reboot you'll have Sygate on your system as your
firewall. They ask that you fill in a registration
form, just do it, it's freeware, so I figure a free
registration isn't that much to ask. (Note if you don't
want mail, etc from them, use a free email account that
you should have set up for internet things).
Now here are a few screens you'll have to become familiar
with and that you should know what they mean. The
way this firewall works is by asking you which programs
you want to allow to have access to your computer.
So for example:
This is the window that
popped up when I opened my Mozilla Web Browser...the firewall
basically asked, "Hey, stupid, do you want this program
to have access to the internet" I wanted this
program to have access so I clicked the "Remember
my answer, and do not ask me again for this application"
box and I hit Yes. By checking the box the firewall
knew that his was an application that I would always want
to allow internet access...so it created a rule that allows
this program to always access the internet when I launch
it.
During the first day of
having a firewall, any firewall, you'll have to answer
a number of these type questions, that's alright though,
because the firewall will remember which applications
you approve of and which you don't want to run.
If you get a warning like the one above for a program
you don't want accessing the net, you just click the box
and hit NO and then a rule will be created to prevent
that program from accessing the net.
The firewall will rest
in your system tray near the clock on your taskbar and
it's icon will look like this 
when you double click this icon in the system tray you'll
open up the control panel for the program and that will
look something like this:
There is lots of things
you can do here but I'll give you a brief rundown of the
most important functions:
- If you want to stop
all internet traffic, basically meaning to shut off
all the incoming and outgoing information, click Block
All
- The Applications button
basically will give you a list of applications that
you've allowed to have access to the internet, in this
section you can change the settings for particular applications.
So if you accidentally blocked Internet Explorer you
can go here to unblock it.
- The Logs button will
give you a listing of the recorded attacks or traffic
that happened to your computer...this is good if you
want to look at a detailed report of what came in and
out and what was blocked.
- Test button will take
you to the Sygate website where you can have them scan
your ports to see if this firewall is working.
You can also go to www.grc.com
and try the Shields Up Test...Steve Gibson runs this
webpage and really does a good job in making people
aware of security risks. I've run the leaktest
from grc.com on this firewall and it passed...but you
might want to try the leak test yourself.
- The cool looking graph
thing, umm, is just a cool looking graph thing...just
like a heart monitor shows the incoming and outgoing
traffic in a blip blip blip type display. I have
to prevent myself from screaming, "Oh my god, my
computer has flatlined" umm, okay, sorry
for the rambling thought.
- Running applications
shows you what programs are currently accessing or trying
to access the internet...as you can see I have IE and
Mozilla running and I have Realplayer blocked, okay
so, umm, I did that just as an example, but I hate realplayer
so it was fun to block them.
- The "Show Message
Console" shows you the messages that Sygate sent
you...so for example if someone attacked my computer
Sygate would say something like, "Port blocked.."
blah blah blah.
That's the basics of Sygate
Firewall...they have a good help section if you have any
questions and you can do advanced rules by going to Tools
----> Advanced Rules and then you can write personal
rule sets for this firewall. Example would be to
block a specific IP, that you can do in the advanced rules
area. A really nice feature that you won't find
on the free ZoneAlarm.
So, install your firewall
and save yourself from the big mean old nasty people on
the net :o)
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