Whats to Use after Kerio's gone.

f1refox

OK looking for your recommendations for what the best firewall to use (Free). As you no Kerio will no longer support there free version in the new year.

ghost26ie

try zonealarm

aidan_walsh

I'm looking for the same recommendation, since Sygate is also dead and buried.

ghost26ie wrote:

try zonealarm

No ta, changed from that because I wanted something more powerful.

MrPinK

aidan_walsh wrote:

No ta, changed from that because I wanted something more powerful.

Poweful is a bit of a vague description when it comes to firewalls. Are there any specific features you're looking for that it lacks?

JPA

If you want powerful you're probably gonna have to pay for it.

halenger

JPA wrote:

If you want powerful you're probably gonna have to pay for it.

Not true. Take a look at Core Force [http://force.coresecurity.com/].

I've just started using it. It uses the windows port of 'pf' from OpenBSD (if you're not aware, 'pf' is the software firewall of kings etc).

I chose high security when I installed it and it did hurt I've gotta say. It basically locked down my system. When I opened thunderbird my imap (incoming) was blocked and I had to add it - worked fine then. Opened up my FTP client last night to grab something from one of my other computers and realized it wasn't working. Took me ages to cop to the firewall. I added it as a new program, chose the location and let it open it. Then you basically play around with it and do what you'd normally do and it monitors it. It worked fine during that but to be honest I haven't gotten back to it since then so I don't know what state it's in.

It does warn you that chosing high will require a lot of configuration but I felt like locking down my system. It does do a search for apps when you first run it and has profiles for them. When you add new apps it checks online for profiles for that app, if it doesn't find one it does what I described above.

As I said, incredibly powerful. It'll show you exactly what apps are doing - what DLLs they're calling (whether it allowed or denied that DLL) and so on. Worth a look at least. I moved to it from ZoneAlarm.

Do read the advisories though. It had problems with certain Anti-Virus programs and the like. There's a new version out as of yesterday though that fixes a lot of them apparently.

JPA

halenger wrote:

Not true. Take a look at Core Force [http://force.coresecurity.com/].

I've just started using it. It uses the windows port of 'pf' from OpenBSD (if you're not aware, 'pf' is the software firewall of kings etc).

I chose high security when I installed it and it did hurt I've gotta say. It basically locked down my system. When I opened thunderbird my imap (incoming) was blocked and I had to add it - worked fine then. Opened up my FTP client last night to grab something from one of my other computers and realized it wasn't working. Took me ages to cop to the firewall. I added it as a new program, chose the location and let it open it. Then you basically play around with it and do what you'd normally do and it monitors it. It worked fine during that but to be honest I haven't gotten back to it since then so I don't know what state it's in.

It does warn you that chosing high will require a lot of configuration but I felt like locking down my system. It does do a search for apps when you first run it and has profiles for them. When you add new apps it checks online for profiles for that app, if it doesn't find one it does what I described above.

As I said, incredibly powerful. It'll show you exactly what apps are doing - what DLLs they're calling (whether it allowed or denied that DLL) and so on. Worth a look at least. I moved to it from ZoneAlarm.

Do read the advisories though. It had problems with certain Anti-Virus programs and the like. There's a new version out as of yesterday though that fixes a lot of them apparently.

OK I'd never heard of that.

halenger

It's new. Worth a look though, in my opinion.

aidan_walsh

MrPinK wrote:

Poweful is a bit of a vague description when it comes to firewalls. Are there any specific features you're looking for that it lacks?

Powerful as in I can see every connection going in and out, not as in "this app has an internet connection", but "this is a full list of what is connected to where". Zone Alarm doesn't accommodate this.

Powerful as in I can cut off a programs access without having to navigate through lots of Fisher Price bright menus. Zone Alarm's UX is horrid, IMO.

halenger, thanks for that, I'll take a peek.

I see Lavasoft (of Ad-aware fame) also have a firewall out now, but there is no free version. It does have a time limited demo though.

edanto

Anything to report from those that were testing Core Force?

No news is good news?

conzy

Hardware firewalls are great, most new routers have them built in.........

But I like Zonealarm as a software firewall

tba

halenger wrote:

It's new. Worth a look though, in my opinion.

must switch to this