Product Review: Zone Alarm Pro
I've tried using a number of personal firewalls, including WRQ
AtGuard (since purchased by Symantec), BlackIce and ZoneAlarm.
On my opinion, ZoneAlarm Pro is by far and away the best
personal firewall on the market.
I like this firewall because it is the first product of it's
kind that actually seems to have been designed for normal human
computer users instead of techno-nerds. The product simply
installs and runs. You can use it out of the box with no
configuration at all. The program will ask a few questions and
learn from you exactly what is allowed and not allowed. What
could be more simple?
This program is one of the very best defenses against spyware,
which is software that "phones home" every once in a while with
information about you. Unlike most other personal firewalls,
ZoneAlarm Pro (as well as the free version) stops outgoing
transmissions as well as incoming ones. This in itself is a
major benefit to the product.
One of the major advantages to this product is the way you can
configure it to know the difference between intranet and
internet accesses. That's the problem with some competing
firewall products - they do not understand that intranet access
is always to be allowed while internet access must be
controlled. ZoneAlarm made this distinction easily.
One of the problems that has been found with other firewalls is
the "pattern" for determining the identity of something
accessing the internet is the program name. Well, as it turns
out, this is very simple for hacker software to fake. ZoneAlarm
was the first product to recognize and fix the weakness by
actually performing a checksum of the product. This allows
ZoneAlarm to be absolutely sure it has the correct program
identified.
One of the absolute coolest things about ZoneAlarm is that it
also protects your system from email viruses. For example, today
I received an email with an attachment. The attachment was a
virus, and it was renamed by ZoneAlarm to make it obvious that
it was a problem. My antivirus software would have caught it as
well, but it was really nice that my firewall stopped the virus
even before that point.
So to sum it all up, yes, I would highly recommend this
firewall. In fact, it is recommended over any other software
firewall product.
Additional Information
Firewalls protect your system
http://www.internet-tips.net/Security/Firewalls.htm
You must protect your system with a personal firewall,
especially if you are using DSL or cable modem.
Products - Sonic WALL
http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/sonicwall.htm You really
want to protect your personal computer? The best possible
firewall solution that I have found is the SonicWall.
Tanstaaf - Spyware
http://www.internet-tips.net/Tanstaafl/spyware.htm Be careful
installing ad supported products - you may find that you every
move on the internet is being watched!