David,
>I'm curious to know what you all are using for a software firewall on your
>Windows desktops. Any suggestions and can you back up your claim for
>purchasing this specific product?
I started using ZoneAlarm way back. That was easy to use and understand,
but was not free for academic use, and I wanted something that would create
a log of activity for me to examine.
Then we got a campus-wide deal on BlackICE, so we used that
everywhere. That did an adequate job, but I never liked it because I never
understood it, it's outgoing protection was so lousy that we always turned
it off, and it did not create any logs.
Now, ever since XP SP2 we've pretty much gone to just using the built-in
Internet Connection Firewall. Still, AFAIK that does not give any outgoing
protection, and of course no activity log.
In between all this I chanced upon a free version of Tiny Personal
Firewall. I like this the best and use in on my own desktop and a couple
other machines. It uses a very straigtforward rule structure
(straightforward to an IT type, not for an ordinary user) for complete
incoming and outgoing protection, and it will create a log of whatever you
like. Unfortunately that free version is rather old and flaky under XP,
so I have not widely deployed it.
For ordinary users I still think ZoneAlarm works best, and I see that in
use on a few desktops. In particular, it's very easy to manage the
outgoing protection.
-- David McFarlane, Research Technology Specialist
Dept. Psychology, Michigan State University
[log in to unmask] www.msu.edu/~mcfarla9
Voice: (517) 353-0799 Fax: (517) 353-1652
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