Which PC firewall?

[Neil Purdie]

I have 'Trend internet security' softwear installed on my PC, for firewall and antivirus.  I am after a MUCH more secure firewall and AV.  

Standalone PC

Win XP, version 2002, service pack 2.

Speedtouch 330 modem, 1.1Mbps connection

Any recomendations from the IT specialists

Cheers Neil

[Camel_Landy]

For AV I've found McAfee to be about the best.

For firewalls, there's a number of options. If it's completely standalone, then I'd suggest something like the Zone Alarm product or look into sticking a black box solution between your PC & connection.

What ever firewall you use, understand what you're doing with it. You could be installing the best firewall product in the world but if you've setup crap rules it'll be worse than useless.

M

[Neil Purdie]

oops, I didn't mean standalone as in entirely un-connected.

Not networked but firewall and AV req'd for broadband internet conection.

Neil

[v7slr]

It also depends how much you want to pay. I thought long and hard then bought a small home server which acts as my firewall as well. You can get one on eBay occasionally for about £250. It does a lot more besides being a server and firewall - look up Toshiba Magnia SG20. I'm comfortable that my network is well protected.

McAffee for AV.  

[karlgurney]

I'm a tight wad so opt for the free ones,  Zone alarm gets the thumbs up along with Kerio for firewalls,  And AVG from grisoft for antivirus,  also i'm running avast on trial at the moment and i have found it to be excellent, It will do a boot scan and check all disks and removable's before windows starts up, which is great as it can delete those sneaky virus's that hide in your system restore files  

[ChrisG]

Just about the ultimate firewall you can get for home use for nothing is Astaro. Its a Linux based firewall that you'd run on a seperate PC with at least two network cards in it. Its proper corporate level protection stuff (100 user business license costs around £5,000 with the extras! ), but it originated as an open source solution so they've carried on providing it FOC for home use, or for £50 annual to give you AV, Spam and Surf protection on top. Its not something that a novice to firewalling would want to tackle though - you're talking similar features / complexity to Checkpoint and Cisco rather than ZoneAlarm etc, so if you need a secure solution thats more plug and play at the expense of features, then something like IPCop is good - IMHO a lot more secure than any on-pc software solution could be and this particular freebie runs on pretty much any old PC laying around assuming it has two network cards (about £5 each), we had it running at work fine on a Pentium 166 with 64Mb RAM a little while back.

Don't be scared by the "Linux" tab either, both are just an ISO download that you burn onto CD, boot the old PC from the CD to install, then use a web interface to configure so no Linux knowledge necessary.

Chris

[adhawkins]

I'm a tight wad so opt for the free ones

You'd have to be a real tightwad to object to paying US$30 a year for Mcafee...

It's a no brainer IMO.

I used to use AVG, but after they took about a week to release an update to one of the major viruses that were flying around a while ago, I decided that it was too risky.

Andy

[Neil Purdie]

New update.

I have just been testing my firewall using  the all the free links that I could find here..  The only info any of them could find from 2 hours testing was my operating system is XP and browser IE6.  No open ports  

So now I'm reasonably happy with the performance of the firewall.

Mcafee for antivirus.  Any other sugestions?

Neil.            Feeling much happier

[Camel_Landy]

Just about the ultimate firewall you can get for home use for nothing is Astaro. Its a Linux based firewall that you'd run on a seperate PC with at least two network cards in it. Its proper corporate level protection stuff (100 user business license costs around £5,000 with the extras! ), but it originated as an open source solution so they've carried on providing it FOC for home use, or for £50 annual to give you AV, Spam and Surf protection on top. Its not something that a novice to firewalling would want to tackle though - you're talking similar features / complexity to Checkpoint and Cisco rather than ZoneAlarm etc, so if you need a secure solution thats more plug and play at the expense of features, then something like IPCop is good - IMHO a lot more secure than any on-pc software solution could be and this particular freebie runs on pretty much any old PC laying around assuming it has two network cards (about £5 each), we had it running at work fine on a Pentium 166 with 64Mb RAM a little while back.

Don't be scared by the "Linux" tab either, both are just an ISO download that you burn onto CD, boot the old PC from the CD to install, then use a web interface to configure so no Linux knowledge necessary.

Chris

Geek...      

M

[ChrisG]

I get paid to be a computer geek, which in turn pays for the kit car so its half acceptable surely      

[Camel_Landy]

If the cap fits.....

M

PS. I'm an IT spod too... I also only do it to pay for my toys.

[adhawkins]

I'm an IT spod too...

Cor...haven't heard that term used since my Mono days...

Andy

[ChrisG]

PS. I'm an IT spod too... I also only do it to pay for my toys.

So whats the betting you checked out the link to Astaro if you didnt already know about it    

[Camel_Landy]

since my Mono days...

That wouldn't happen to be Monotype?

M

[Neil Purdie]

Mcafee for antivirus.  Any other sugestions?

I'l take that as a no then.  

Cheers for the help ?

Neil.