Information and Advice On Protecting Your Network With Firewalls

A listing of my top choices for personal firewall software you can employ on your system to restrict unauthorized traffic and protect it from malicious network activity.

With the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Microsoft has improved the capabilities of the built-in firewall by leaps and bounds. Is the new firewall sufficient? Should you replace your 3rd-party personal firewall with the built-in Windows firewall?

This article provides a very basic overview of what a firewall does, the different types of firewalls used and some of the pros and cons associated with them.

Personal Firewalls by Lisa Yeo does a good job of providing a thorough understanding of the purpose and use of firewalls while also stressing their limitations and pitfalls.

Links to personal firewall software available free of charge for personal use.

ZoneAlarm is freely available and is better than nothing, but ZoneAlarm Pro 3.7 provides significantly more protection and is worth the added expense. ZoneAlarm Pro walks you through configuration and helps protect your privacy as well as being a firewall.

Download free firewall software. Three free firewalls.

Windows Free Firewall software solutions featured and reviewed - download

Provides details about this popular freely available firewall through a list of international links.

Provides Internet-connection-sharing software, personal-firewall software, and security and access-management applications. Download demos.

Firewall audit with a free online security scan and privacy audit. Multilingual support.

The Windows XP SP2 firewall may not offer the best protection, but it offers better protection than no firewall at all and it is built-in to Windows XP systems. This tip will show you how to configure the Windows XP SP2 firewall.