Software firewalls

• Market: dominant in SOHO and a player in business.

  • F.W.T.K. org: how it all started, still a free firewall toolkit.
  • Checkpoint: FireWall-1, a leader in business networks
  • IT security: comparison table for business networks.
  • Zone Labs: a leader in SOHO networks, free for personal use.
  • Comodo Firewall: also a leader in SOHO, also free for personal use.
  • Network ICE: another leader in SOHO, see it here.
  • Symantec: a traditional Windows developer built a solid firewall.

• How they work: similar to hardware, but using a generic computer as the firewall device.

  • Comodo example: once downloaded and installed block by default all inbound traffic and ask for authorization for inbound and outbound traffic, creating rules. You can choose to allow or deny specific applications. You can create rules to make ports stealth, and see status of the connections in your host.
  • ZoneAlarm example: similarly blocks all inbound traffic, require you to setup security levels for LAN and Internet. Ask for authorization for outbound traffic, adding authorized programs to the list.

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