Best Free Firewall

 

Introduction

A firewall protects your system from unwanted intruders. It also protects your system from programs that will send out or broadcast your personal information. You could think of a firewall as being like the entry door on your residence. If you have no door, intruders could freely enter or leave your residence and have full access to everything in it. When you have a firewall on your system, it's like installing and then locking the door to your residence. No one can get in except you and those who are allowed access by you, whether you give them a key, or you open the door for them when asked. Firewalls that are doing their job will often tell you there's someone at the door and ask if you want to let them in. A popup appears telling you someone/something is trying to connect to you, or that a program wants access to the internet. It asks you what you want to do, and it's up to you if you want to open the door or not. There are even some malicious programs that get in and prop the back door open or they make a key to your door for themselves. These are a type of trojan which is a very dangerous type of malware. It is extremely important to have a good firewall installed to control access to your system and protect your personal information. It is also equally important to install antivirus software and maybe additional security protection for your system. If you want to learn more about firewalls, visit these excellent sites: How Firewalls Work, How Firewalls Protect Your PC and Microsoft Security Firewalls FAQ. If you decide not to use one of the firewall products in the article, please be sure your Windows Firewall is active. NEVER use more than one software firewall on one system at the same time. You may, however, use a hardware and a software firewall in conjunction to improve protection. Before installing your new firewall: First and foremost, you should back up your system and partitions. While installing new security software, you may encounter unforeseen difficulties which may result in system instability or system failure. Everyone's system is different and very unique. You may have an old, latent driver in your system that is incompatible with whatever you are installing. To avoid frustration, loss of data, and possibly therapy, you should always back up your data to a separate partition on your hard drive (the same size or larger than the partition you are backing up), or you should back up your information to an external hard drive. It is far easier to restore a system from a backup archive or image than it is to resurrect a damaged operating system that no longer boots. Now that I have made my point perfectly clear to readers, the backup software I recommend is Paragon Backup & Recovery free edition. Install, backup your system and move on to the next step. Before installing a new firewall (or other security/suite), you MUST completely uninstall any previous firewall (or security suite). [This recommendation only applies to third party firewall products. If you are using the Windows firewall included with your operating system, you can simply install the new firewall according to the product instructions.] After uninstalling, the system must be rebooted as most uninstallers have a built-in cleaner to finish removing remaining components of the software. This may not be good enough. At this time it's a good idea to run a drive cleaner to remove all remaining temporary files. I recommend CCleaner.  After using the cleaner, users may want to run the registry cleaner included in this software. I recommend using caution when cleaning your registry. This is only an optional step. If you are in doubt, and you really don't know what you are doing, then perhaps you should leave your registry alone. If you are going to clean your registry, I ONLY recommend CCleaner to novices and those with moderate experience. I have used CCleaner's registry cleaner thousands of times on numerous systems and have never had a problem with it, unlike other registry tools. If you do decide to clean your registry with CCleaner, make sure you backup your registry entries when prompted to do so with CCleaner. Once you have uninstalled the old firewall, cleaned the file system and the registry (if you chose to do so), reboot the computer and you are ready for a fresh installation on your new firewall (or other security/suite). Today the use of reliable firewalls is IMPARATIVE as we face a new age of cybercrimes like identity and data theft! A good firewall will not only thwart attacks by hackers but is your first line of defense in keeping your personal information in your hands alone. No firewall or any security software can certainly guarantee 100% protection certainty. As technology changes, criminals change and attacks on systems, and even malware becomes more sophisticated everyday. I want to be clear that though I have information posted in this article for very old, unsupported firewalls, I will only recommend current, actively supported firewalls and security solutions. The following Free Firewall article is presently divided into two sections: (I) software firewalls for broad protection and greater user involvement; (II) software firewalls for basic protection and less user involvement.

Discussion

I. Best Software Firewalls for Maximum Protection and Greater User Involvement The following personal firewalls provide excellent network protection. Each firewall comes with default settings and shouldn't require much adjustment except for the needs of advanced users. Some information for configuration is provided whenever possible to help you learn about your firewall and to better suit it to your needs. Firewall products in this section may require a fair amount of time to learn their features. Some products rely of lists of known safe applications, safe vendors, or valid digital signatures. Some products can optionally give safe or trusted status to all your current files, some have training or installation modes, and some have lesser configurations to reduce monitoring. Since firewalls are often praised for their level of protection at their maximum security settings, users may not have the degree of protection mentioned in the reviews below if they reduce security levels using the firewall interface, or if users employ methods to increase automation in order to reduce alerts.   Comodo Internet Security is the best choice for users seeking a full featured security suite. It has a robust and a very active HIPS or application monitoring feature called "Defense+", which matches or exceeds the security performance of pay products. Comodo also provides a "memory firewall" which in their words, “Cutting-edge protection against sophisticated buffer overflow attacks.” Comodo allows for much control and customization, with a plethora of additional settings to adjust for the curious or for the paranoid. This latest release of Comodo is suitable for both lightly-skilled users (still must have knowledge of installed programs) and technically advanced users. Comodo includes a very effective Sandbox component to limit how many applications and new software installations affect your computer. The use of sandbox protection helps to limit the negative effects of malware if some terrible infection manages to enter your system. Comodo Firewall boasts a “Default Deny Protection” for applications. Though they maintain a lengthy list of known safe applications in their database, if an unknown application attempts entry through the Firewall, Comodo will deny the application and ask the user what to do. The new release contains many new features while allowing experienced users to maintain absolute control over their system by controlling ports, protocols, and complete configuration command. During installation, it gives you a choice between two levels of security. The "Firewall Only" mode (discussed in the next section) and the Comodo Internet Security (includes antivirus, antimalware, and additional features). After installation Comodo automatically selects "Safe Mode" which maximizes proactive protection to a high level, and is the best mode for most users. It will generate numerous popup alerts for applications not in its trusted vendors list (you can browse this list to see if you trust the vendors: go to the Defense+ tab > "Common Tasks" > "View My Trusted Software Vendors"). When you answer "allow" and "remember your answer" to popup alerts for an application, Comodo creates a custom policy for it. Some of its policies are fairly liberal. In the more liberal "Clean PC Mode", Defense+ automatically treats all applications on your drive as safe (but if any malware is currently hidden on your drive, it too would be considered safe). Applications still receive some minimal monitoring for Comodo's two protected lists ("my protected registry keys" and "my protected COM interfaces") and for running as an executable, or more/less monitoring depending on their custom policy. And new files get sent to a list of files "waiting for your review" in the "Summary" page. Files listed for review will be considered possibly unsafe and will provoke popup messages, as if in Safe Mode, until their custom policies are made. Comodo limits the frequency of alerts by automatically treating some programs as safe and allowing some applications to access the Internet. You can additionally automate the behavior of Defense+ by one or more of these methods for treating applications as safe: Have it "remember your answer" to all popup alerts when an application first runs, which works for some applications (because some custom policies set this way are close to "trusted" status). But if an application still nags you, click "More Options" in the alert and use the drop down box to select "trusted" or "blocked" (etc.), if available, or set an application to trusted manually ("Defense+" > "Advanced" > "Computer Security Policy" > "Edit..." > "Use a Predefined Policy"), which finally ceases popup alerts and most intrusion prevention for that application. Add files to the lists of "My Own Safe Files" or "My Trusted Software Vendors" in the interface (see the "Defense+" tab), which is most helpful for "Safe Mode" or "Paranoid Mode". Use the "Clean PC Mode" (right-click the tray icon and select it under the "Defense+ Security Level"). But make sure to scan and remove any malware first.  Take a look at this guide on How to Install Comodo (version 4.1) The following guides are far outdated and being reviewed for update so they are relevant to the current release of Comodo, but you are welcome to look at them anyway for any useful information that might help you: How to Tame Comodo Defense+ Without Disabling It and Comodo Forum Help. Alternatively, see this mini guide (currently reviewing for update relevant to current version of Comodo) for an example of how to maximize some of its basic settings. Comodo nicely allows you to quickly increase or decrease protection with its different modes, configurations, and settings. This review is currently undergoing revision. A solid contender is the free version of Online Armor Free. It has outstanding leak-test and HIPS performance (the HIPS feature is mostly in its "Program Guard"). It has a unique feature called "run safer" that allows you to selectively set risky applications (web browsers, office software, readers/viewers, instant messengers, email or news programs, multimedia software, download managers, etc.) to run as if under a limited user account (go to "Programs" tab > uncheck "Hide Trusted" > highlight a program and click "Run Safer"). It minimizes popup alerts over time with its automatic list of safe programs, your on-demand scans with its safety check wizard, and your responses to popup alerts -- especially in cases where you tell it to remember your decisions and have it treat programs as trustworthy. Run the wizard and have it search your PC for known programs to allow/block/ask. In this case, Online Armor relies on you to respond to alerts for unknown programs. For the curious or paranoid user, it uses excellent popup messages when it automatically allows a program to connect online and, optionally, when it automatically trusts a program/process to run (these alerts don't require user action and they can be enabled/disabled in the interface with "Options" > "Firewall", and "Programs" > "Options"). For example, I noticed a message when it auto trusted a key logger test (Zemana, which it failed initially), but after I set the tester to untrusted, it gave very informative and detailed security alerts (and then it passed the test and logged the tester in the interface under the "Key Logger" tab, but it only logged the key logger after the test was untrusted). You can even close both its tray tools from its right-click context menu. They are not needed for the firewall and HIPS components to continue running and protecting. Zone Alarm Free Firewall 2010 is an excellent inbound/outbound OS firewall solution suited for users of every level of experience. Zone Alarm protects systems from intrusions as well as program access to the web. Zone Alarm features an easy-to-understand user interface. Users can adjust security settings for their needs to allow for file/printer sharing, public networks, and even turn off the firewall if ever needed. Simple controls in the form of visual slide bars make setting up this firewall a snap. Zone Alarm offers to help users setup initial program access with a first-run scan of installed software and allows/denies accordingly. This first scan does not always offer accurate access to programs. Internet Zone controls are divided into the Trusted Zone, used for the local network to share files, printers, etc., and the Internet Zone for communication to/from the web. A simple 3-position format allows users to choose from "No protection" (firewall is off), Medium (Allows file/printer sharing), and High (will allow users to connect to a network but will not allow anyone else to connect to your system). The medium setting is recommended for home networks with more than one system, and for users whose modem requires this setting. The high setting is most recommended for single-system web access (only one computer at home and modem does not require a home network setting), and for public areas such as cafes, restaurants, and hotels (etc.) with wifi. Users will have to interact with this firewall for a time after installation to make sure programs needing LAN or internet access are granted proper permissions. The popups are very easily understood most of the time, listing the program name or the name of the executable file asking for access. Most often programs executable files contain the name of the program followed by ".exe" so even novice users should be able to easily identify the name of the program asking for web access so they can make the appropriate decision. Popups are very simple in format offering Deny, Accept, and a checkbox a user can check to make Zone Alarm remember the decision. The Program Control will allow users to set Zone Alarm for Low, which is a learning mode and no OS firewall protection and limited popups. Or users can choose Medium, which will make programs ask for permission to access the trusted and internet zones. The high setting is not offered in the Free version of Zone Alarm. The Smart Defense Advisor will help reduce popups by offering settings for programs asking for access, based on the decisions made by other users worldwide. Users can choose whether or not to participate in Zone Alarm's community defense program. Users can set programs access manually at anytime by going to Zone Alarm's Program Control and selecting Programs. Zone Alarm Free offers very good HIPS protection, Inbound/Outbound defense, Stealth mode, Anti-phishing protection, identity theft protection, and now even offers 2 GB free online backup. Zone Alarm Free 2010 passed all leak and hack testing with flying colors. The only negatives I can name is lack of program-to-program protection offered by the free version, which includes programs reaching out to the web through a web browser. Note to those using or planning to install Immunet Protect: Zone Alarm products are not compatible with Immunet Protect and at this time there is no work-around for this incompatibility. Immunet Protect and Zone Alarm products (any Zone Alarm product - free or commercial) will cancel each other out and neither one will function in your system. Development is continuing and Immunet hopes to release a version someday that will be compatible with Zone Alarm.  This review is currently undergoing revision. Outpost Firewall Free is a good choice for users who want highly flexible protection without sacrificing usability. It was obviously made with average users in mind, judging by the care taken to simplify alert messages and make it easy to adjust intrusion prevention (or HIPS) monitoring. For example, it remembers your responses to popup alerts without the need to set "trusted" rules (like in Comodo/Online Armor), and like Online Armor it notifies you when it automatically allows an application to access the Internet (especially helpful during the learning phase). The free version lacks many extras of the pay version, however, such as automatic updates and the ability to break active connections. The HIPS component is called "Host Protection" in the interface. It provides four default levels of protection, which can be easily set with a slider and additionally customized item by item by advanced users. The default "optimal" setting only monitors the "most dangerous activities" (such as memory injections, driver loads, and a healthy list of system critical features -- auto starts, shell extensions, and internet settings) instead of all program activities. But these "optimal" settings lack protection from keyloggers, direct disk accessing, DNS API request monitoring, etc. You can check the types of reduced monitoring in "Settings..." > "Host Protection" > "Customize...". The installation asks whether you want to train the firewall for a week (using its Auto-Learn mode and Rules Wizard). In this mode, it sets rules automatically for known safe applications.