Firewalls - What are they and why do I need one?

[Totro]

Firewalls are probably the single best thing you can have to help secure your computer.

"But I have got an AntiVirus program and I have got all sorts of cleaning programs - why do I need a firewall?" - I hear you ask.

The simple answer is that, in the main, the above mentioned programs help you after you have been "got at".

A good Firewall will stop 95% to 99% of the "bad stuff" getting on board your computer in the first place. Thus, your A/V proggie will not have to work so hard and you will not need to suffer the problems of "invasion" nor spend time downloading and running various programs needed to help "clean you up" after you got "infected".

There are many good commercial Firewalls around and also many good "Free" Firewalls.

IF you run Windows XP SP2 there is also a Firewall available within that O/S. That particular Firewall, although reasonably good, is really only a "one-way" Firewall in that it does not check activity going out from your computer but really only checks stuff coming in to your computer. This is certainly better than not having a Firewall at all, but considering the number of good "paid for" & "free" Firewalls available - it is strongly recommended that you investigate the various offerings available.

Some further insight about Firewalls and other useful information may be found by visiting this page http://www.landzdown.com/index.php?topic=192.0 and having a look at the valuable information on mitch's "Clicky" on that page.

Stay Safe! Do your bit for your own protection (and for others you "communicate" with over the net).

Cheers, Totro  :thumbsup:

[mitch]

NOTE the latest security update is for a fix for remote computing and the XP firewall will allow bad things to pass

so XP's firewall is better than nothing, but i would not sleep well if that was all i used ;-)

link on the unpatched bug
http://secunia.com/advisories/16071/

[Eric the Red]

The following link is a good resouce for anyone wishing to know more about firewalls and how they operate. It is aimed more at the hardware firewall than the software (application) firewall but is you want to understand how they work it is a good read.

Be advised that this is a .pdf download and may take some time for anyone accessing via a 56k dial up connection:

http://www.niscc.gov.uk/niscc/docs/re-20041221-00963.pdf?lang=en