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WIKI Page - Firewalls

Contents
General Information Types of firewalls Top products Firewall Tests Events Communities Further reading

General Information

Firewalls implement control policies between networks. They protect your computer from unauthorized access by allowing or denying traffic.

Types of firewalls

	Network layer and packet filters operate at the level of the TCP/IP protocol stack and block traffic based on a wide range of attributes like source, port or destination service in individual IP packets. They're usually very fast and transparent to users. Application layer firewalls control browser, telnet and ftp traffic, prevent unwanted traffic and perform logging and auditing of traffic passing through them. They usually provide detailed reports on all activity. Proxies usually act as application layer firewalls, blocking other packets than those traveling to or from an application.

Top products

	Home users prefer ZoneAlarm Pro because of its user friendly interface and “out-of-the-box” protection. It only runs only Microsoft Windows and it also includes spyware removal, a pop-up blocker and identity theft protection. The free version is said to be less efficient than other free tools but the paid version is a complete and powerful solution for your computer's security Security specialists feel different: they say that Comodo Firewall is truly the best firewall on the market. Tested by Matousec, Comodo Firewall Pro got the best score for the level of anti-leak protection: 9,475, considerably higher that ZoneAlarm's score of 8,600. What seems to set the customers off is not the price, as Comodo is free software, but the fact that it's not that efficient unless configured by the user.
	Jertico Personal Firewall was declared the next best thing. With a score of 9,375 it surpassed well known products like Kaspersky Internet Security 7, Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security, F-Secure Internet Security and Norton Internet Security 2007. With the highest security settings it only failed the Breakout test. To please the home users, Jertico comes with the best configuration for the default settings.

Last on the podium, Outpost Firewall Pro 4.0 is considered a good piece of software by both specialists and home users. The bad news is that it sometimes uses improperly user mode hooks to bypass some of the leak tests.

Firewall Tests

While browsing, your computer may have up to 65,535 ports open. You can find many free tests online to check how secure your firewall really is. For example, on the Comodo homepage you can type some text into a text box and the Comodo Parent Injection Leak Test Suite will test if you firewall prevents CPIL from sending your message to the Comodo servers.

AuditMyPC also offers a free online test that checks all your computer's ports especially those that are usually left open. In case it finds vulnerabilities, AuditMyPC will also list advice on how to lock down your system.

Events

RSA Conference - http://www.rsaconference.com/
7th Annual Security Conference, June 2-3, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV, USA - http://www.security-conference.org/
IEEE GlobeCom 2007, Washington, 26-30 November 2007, Washington, DC, USA - http://www.comsoc.org/confs/globecom/2007/cfpapers.html
The Tenth Annual International Techno Security Conference, June 1-4, 2008, South Carolina - http://www.thetrainingco.com/html/Techno2008.html
CCS 2007: 14th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security , Hilton Alexandria Mark Center, 29 October - 2 November 2007, Alexandria, VA, USA. - http://www.iwsec.org/
ISACA’s ninth annual Network Security Conference, 12-14 November 2007 Frankfurt, Germany - http://www.isaca.org/

Communities

CastleCops Security Forums - http://www.castlecops.com/forums.html
Network Security Forum - http://www.networksecuritytech.com/
Computer Security Forums - http://www.security-forums.com/
Firewall Forums - http://www.firewallforums.com/
AfterDawn Firewall Forums - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/250273