Hardware firewall question

[Albinoni]

Do hardware firewalls stop Trojans or is it only software ones that do. I've had some mixed answers re this question, as some say yes and some say no. I thought No myself.

[TopperID]

Hardware FWs do not block outbound traffic, so they cannot prevent a Trojan from 'phoning home'. But of course that assumes you have already been infected by a trojan that is attempting to send out information.

However a hardware FW will be able to stop hackers from getting into your machine from the outside.

[WSFuser]

hardware firewall only stop inbound attacks. if u want to stop a trojan from calling home ull need a software firewall with outbound capabilities or an app like AppDefend.

[CrazyM]

-{ Quote: "Do hardware firewalls stop Trojans or is it only software ones that do. I've had some mixed answers re this question, as some say yes and some say no. I thought No myself." }-
With a hardware firewall you can control both inbound and outbound network connections. If malware running on a system behind the firewall was to use a common service to connect out, ie. HTTP, then it would probably succeed as this along with other common remote services would be permitted. If it used something other than common service ports to communicate then a properly configured hardware firewall would stop it. Stateful inspection is also going further these days in some hardware firewalls and network communications involving common services can be monitored closer for anomalies.

Regards,

CrazyM

[budfox]

Some hardware firewalls have built in AV's to catch trojans/ virus's/ greyware/ ect. I am running a fortigate 60 that has all of this and IPS.

I have run the hardware firewall and process control for months now with no problems..I still think process controll is a much better way to control trojan type behavior since there are so many ways to circumvent outbound protection).