Does ZA firewall do its job?

[rOadToIS]

I heard some people criticizing ZoneAlarm's Free Firewall on its lack of protection.
So, does it do its job? Does it provide solid protection: preventing hackers in public area/home?

[Kerodo]

Their criticism was probably directed at it's relative lack of outbound coverage compared to ZA Pro or perhaps Comodo or others. In terms of inbound protection, it is fine, and just as good as ZA Pro or any others.

[rOadToIS]

Thanks for the reply!:)

[act8192]

The question does not specify the meaning of "job".
Of course it does its job. It's superb, IMO. Inbound. Outbound. It's a packet filtering and application watching firewall.

http://forums.zonealarm.org/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=security&message.id=17808&query.id=61590#M17808

Of course it depends on what you want it to do. Or not to do.

[JRViejo]

I agree with act8192. As a long time user of ZA Free Firewall version 5.5.094.000, nothing gets out of my PC unless I say so. It's shut down so tight (programs need to ask for my permission every time) that it squeals like a pig if any outbound attempt is ever tried.

To date, my oldie but goodie ZA has blocked 141,380 access attempts and 2,777 of those blocked intrusions have been highly rated. And while numbers might not mean anything, my WinXP machine continues to purr like a kitten. :) Thanks ZA!

[progress]

But there is no HIPS component in ZA Free, am I right? I think Comodo or PC Tools give you more protection in this area ::)

[Tarq57]

A firewall is a firewall. HIPS is something else. Some firewall manufacturers have included a HIPS (or HIPS-like) component in their firewall. Which technically, I suppose, makes it more suite-like.

[IAmAsean]

Does ZA firewall do its job?

It does. I was never a believer of these "leak tests" and I don't think that will change even in the far future. Leak tests do not make sense to me.

Keeping the baddies off and out of your machine was never the job of a Firewall to begin with.

What does a Firewall do?
1. Packet Filtering 2. Application Gateway 3. Circuit-Level Gateway 4. Proxy Server.

For malicious codes to land onto your machine must bypass, not the Firewall, but your other seucirty applications (HIPS, antivirus, antimalware and antispyware).

There is the reason why many standalone Firewalls in the past have now bundled themselves with antivirus and antimalware modules and of course, HIPS.

[progress]

Why doesn't ZA Free disable the XP firewall? :(

[JRViejo]

ance, the old versions never disabled the XP firewall, you had to do it manually. I don't know about the newer versions but perhaps you want to check the ZA Free User Guides (http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/support/technical-support-zonealarm-pc-security-free-firewall.htm) page for your particular version.

[Enigm]

So, you have all forgotten how an older version of zonealarm was caught calling
home, encrypted and cleverly hidden to the user ?
You may all want to read up on where Gil Shwed, founder, CEO and chairman of board of Check Point comes from ..
http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-military-unit-ventures-biz-cx_gk_0208israel.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1029006.html

[fax]

-{ Quote: "So, you have all forgotten how an older version of zonealarm was caught calling
home, encrypted and cleverly hidden to the user ?
You may all want to read up on where Gil Shwed, founder, CEO and chairman of board of Check Point comes from ..
http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/israel-military-unit-ventures-biz-cx_gk_0208israel.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1029006.html" }-

... and here we are again... I think I predicted a FUD a year on ZA calling home... and magically here we are again... this time we have even the mossad... LOL

Please update yourself, ZA calling home was a bug fixed LOOOONG time ago, discussed here too... more than once... :wacko:

Fax

[AKAJohnDoe]

has this thread has taken a turn into intolerance?

[gery]

I am using the pro version with spyware turned off and it is runing very well here alongside Avira Premium . very happy so far. The latest release is improved over the previous .light and not so intrusive. Better then anything i have used .

[AKAJohnDoe]

I have current licenses for both ZA-AV and ZA-Pro; running ZA-AV at this time.

[gery]

-{ Quote: "I have current licenses for both ZA-AV and ZA-Pro; running ZA-AV at this time." }-
How is ZAV running

[NNard]

I am currently running the latest version of ZA-AV along with SAS Pro on VISTA without any problems.

NNard:D

[Page42]

-{ Quote: "A firewall is a firewall. HIPS is something else. Some firewall manufacturers have included a HIPS (or HIPS-like) component in their firewall. Which technically, I suppose, makes it more suite-like." }-
ZoneAlarm first introduced its OSFirewall, a "behavior-based strategy to block malware and spyware", in mid-2005. I run it enabled inside ZoneAlarmPro. It alerts to lots of suspicious activities, depending of course on the level a user sets it at. It's a strong add-on component, a "kernel-level firewall (that) monitors suspicious activity affecting the operating system, programs and files, and disables destructive programs". I'm glad it's there. :thumb:

[AKAJohnDoe]

-{ Quote: "How is ZAV running" }-
ZA-AV was upgraded recently to 8.0.298.000 and works very well for me.

According to my saved install files, I have upgraded ZAAV several times now, although I know there were some prior to these that I did not retain:

08/27/2008 zaAvSetup_80_015_000_en.exe
10/16/2008 zaAvSetup_80_020_000_en.exe
11/06/2008 zaAvSetup_80_059_000_en.exe
02/23/2009 zaAvSetup_80_298_000_en.exe

[Page42]

-{ Quote: "I am using the pro version with spyware turned off and it is runing very well here alongside Avira Premium . very happy so far. The latest release is improved over the previous .light and not so intrusive. Better then anything i have used ." }-
I keep the Anti-spyware component turned off too. I think that avast! is adequate enough versus spyware in real-time. Every now and then I update the defs and run a scan, but it's essentially a feature I keep turned off. :)

[AKAJohnDoe]

I run the stuff listed here (http://pc.akajohndoe.com/secytools.htm), and now and again run SAS, MBAM, HJT, and GMER, but have never found anything other than a false positive running any Anti-Spyware scanner.

[Page42]

This is a pretty cool feature...