KIS firewall - confusing?

Hi - I have been trailling Kaspersky AV, and liked it so much that i thought I might as well try KIS 6 a see what i thought of their whole package, including firewall. Thus far, I have mixed feelings, because I find the firewall in KIS to be a bit confusing.

I like to have complete control of applications so that I know when things are connecting to the net and so on. KIS comes with a number of preset rules for common applications, which is fine. When in training mode, numerous popups occur which allow you to set rules for application behaviours, as you'd would expect. However, I find the options for setting the rules to be less than intuitive - the terminology used seems to differ from what i am used to with other products. For example, you can allow or block an application from connecting to a particular IP address, but in some cases it doesn't seem clear how you can quickly make a rule that blocks similar connections to all IPs, as I have found I could readily do with Kerio.

What do other folks think of the KIS firewall - is it just a matter of learning different terminology? (The PDF manual I found not to be that helpful)

 

Well, yes it can be a bit confusing, but with the time you will adapt to it, it is a good firewall, especially in KIS.

 

Pal, then just stick to KAV, and get Jetico or other more advance FW. problem solved. KIS just not your cup of tea, but my cup of tea, where layman like me just wanna installed it, forget about it, and start surfing. Ofcourse you can say you want better security, but hey! i am a safe surfer.

 

At one point I bought KIS6 because I was able to get KIS from newegg for really cheap, and I thought it would be better than buying the normal round of software for another system. It took me about half an hour to uninstall that component and buy another license to Look'n'Stop. Now I don't use any of it, but the rest is still worthwhile.

 

Thanks - I quite like the way the KIS firewall integrates with the rest. It's just that the actions that you can choose from for setting behaviour rules are not that intuitive to understand. I will stick with it for a while and see how it goes.

At least it seems to be stable - I had BSODs with Kerio, and I hear that the new version of Outpost can be a bit flakey.

 

I'm using KIS 6 and indeed the firewall is the weak point : for instance the shield's up leaktest wasn't blocked .... Now I switched to another firewall ZA Pro and everything is under control ! It makes my PC boot a bit slower but I gained a lot on the security side ! And last but not least these 2 progs get along just fine !

 

Did you check the "stealth" box on your internet connection in KIS 6? I am using it and it works fine on both my DSL and VPN connections. Passes Shields Up leak test

 

I use KIS and the firewall, hasnt caused me any problems and easy to use and fully understand all the rules, configurations etc, didnt take long to figure out... easy to use IMHO, some people just need practice maybe

 

if you're talking about blocking an application from connecting to all IP, just click the dropdown list and click "any address"...

 

Thanks sick0, I'll try that. I think I'm getting the hang of it. I am going to stick with this product for now, as I do like the interface. I've read that the KIS firewall does quite well in various tests, including leaktests.

 

Yes, currently only fails on two of them: DNSTester and Breakout.

 

I have not used KIS but with Kerio I got around the DNSTester by disabling the DNS service in windows. It means that you have to make more rules but probably a good thing. There is a recent thread about it.

 

If I remember correctly (its been a while since I installed KIS),.. KIS does, on installation, disable the DNS client, but as in place open packet filter rules for DNS, which would make KIS fail the DNStester. So it would just be a case of removing the open rules for DNS, and make all applications ask (and create DNS rules per app)

 

The latest version doesn't have the DNS rules set up globally (rules for packet filtering) so each application generates the DNS rule in rules for applications (check the presets to see how they look).