Re: [OT] ZoneAlarm alternatives ??

["domdevitto" <dom@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ok all, some [OT] top-dollar advice:
Use a software firewall, Antispyware, Antivirus *and* parental control.

I use a hardware firewall as well (two actually!), but I'm a geek, and
it's my trade :-) But neither HW FW is strictly necessary.

Good SW Firewall protects you from unauthorised applications going
OUTBOUND (e.g. viruses, spyware etc) as well as inbound and outbound
connections.  XP's firewall should be a minimum.

Antispyware is a must - this stuff is nasty, and often worse than a
virus.  This will protect you from a *LOT* of new viruses too.  Anyone
who has had to unpick CWS will tell you they would have blaster any day.

Antivirus, obviously, picks up known (or fuzzy-known) malware.  Best
stuff is "behavior-based" as well as "signature-based",
and so can
pick up 'zero-day', or 'targetted' attacks.

Parental Control (e.g. excellent & free, K9webProtection) can be set
to prohibit access to dodgy sites - protecting you from 'www.abay.com'
as well as places in russia/china/wherever that may host some nasty
web browser exploits. K9 supports blocking 'unrated' sites, which
kicks most malware into touch.

If this slows your 2.something Ghz CORE-2-DUO down, you need to clean
up the other crap you've installed on it.  I have all this running on
a P3 500mhz XP box, and it's fine.  I know of people that have
disabled antivirus because "it made it go slow"...yep, because
the
antivirus was FIXING thousands of infected files, they switched it
off.....doh!

Of course, all this is diminishing returns, but as I blocked China
getting a few thousand internet banking logins recently, I really can
vouch for playing it safe, and the internet is a hostile place.

Oh, and almost no attacks today are not through vulnerable services,
they are all through email and browsing, so a router will buy you very
nearly nothing security-wise.  Especially if you use ANY
port-forwarding, e.g. in order to P2P quicker.


Just my 'two cents', errr, and my day job.... :-)
Dom
PS. Some HW firewalls *can* block outbound connections too, (based on
source and/or destination port), but they can't know exactly which
program is doing the communicating.
And YES, NAT alone is usually enough to stop incoming, if port
forwarding isn't on etc.
--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Mal Lansell" <mal@...> wrote:
>
> I'm fully prepared to get shot down on this, but it was my
> understanding that a hardware firewall only blocks incoming
> connections - you need a software one to stop outgoing.
>
> And isn't the router's NAT sufficient to keep people out (i.e you
> don't need to get one that claims to have a firewall as well).
>
> Mal
>
>
> --- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "milesy1981" <chrismiles@>
wrote:
> >
> > The best suggestion I can give you is NOT to use a software
> > firewall. They simply are not nessessary. Get a router, and you
then
> > have a hardware firewall protecting you, and not slowing your
> > machine.
> >
> > Only software you need is
> >
> > Anti Virus - AVG
> > Anti Spyware - Ad-Aware
> > Anti Rootkit - F-Secure blacklight
> >
> > the latter two only needing to run when you need them running.
> >
>