hi. i am used to zone alarm and sygate .i am thinking of useing outpost firewall.With zone alarm or sygate you have a simple task of allowing server rights to programes or denying them.with outpost do you have this option. If a program asks for access and you select browser etc does this restrict access rights ,like server. I am currently useing zone alarm and noticed vsmon useing alot of resources.does outpost use as much. Thanks for any replys. i
Hi Waters, There would be nothing gained using two active firewalls, the fights btween them would probably cause incompatabilities that would not be worth the trouble. Outpost 2.5 is a very nice firewall with fine control. Trying any of the good firewalls one at a time is probably your best best then select the one that you feel most comfortable with. All firewalls require a certain amount of knowledge to be effective, some firewalls have quite a steep learning curve so just take your time before making your choice. HTH Pilli
Waters, With Outpost, you can assign permissions at three levels: Trusted or Blocked - Trusted applications can send or receive any traffic, Blocked applications have no network access. Rules Presets - These are pre-created rulesets for common applications that allow the types of traffic normal for that application, e.g. email protocols for email software, web protocols for browsers. Custom Rules - These allow you to specify the ports (protocols), addresses and direction (whether an application can make or receive network connections). These are needed for applications where no preset is supplied, or where you really want to fine-tune application restrictions (for example, you could allow Windows Media Player Internet access but block it from windowsmedia.com to avoid possible privacy concerns). This means you can exert far finer control over application access (you should find similar options available in ZoneAlarm Pro or Sygate under their advanced settings) but this does require greater knowledge of what network access an application legitimately needs. In contrast, allowing "server rights" to a program simply means that it is allowed to accept incoming connections from any source. From a security perspective, you really do want to place restrictions here, since many programs require the ability to receive incoming connections from other programs on the same computer only - not from the global Internet. For more information, you can download Outpost manuals at Agnitum's download page (the Quick Start and Beginner Guides notably) and the Web-Hiker's Guide to Outpost Firewall has lots of information on rules creation also (although it covers version 1, much of it applies to version 2 also). Finally, the Outpost forum is a good place to check up on existing issues and to find out more specific information (just hope Pilli doesn't mind me plugging another forum here... ).
Hi P2K, Not my forum I use OP2.5 on my server and agree that the OP forums are well worth a visit. I also use Kerio 2.1.5 on my laptop as it has low resource usage using BlitzenZues's rules and I am behind a router with ProcessGuard protecting both OP and Kerio. I have been attacked, intentionally, when beta testing a certain product but no one managed to break through though they did manage to slow down my connection a tad. Cheers. Pilli
thanks for replys. if i use rule presets for specific applications,does outpost give these programes server rights from all or restrict.With zone alarm i could deny all programes server rights.
I think Outpost would not allow incoming connections by default, unless you specifically tell it to do so.
"Server rights" means the ability to receive incoming connections. Presets will only include this if the application needs it, e.g. an FTP server needs to be able to receive incoming file transfer commands, a web server needs to be able to receive incoming web page requests. Most applications (e.g. web browsers, email clients) do not need this and their presets only allow outgoing connections. If in doubt, you can check the ruleset for an application by going to Options/Application and double-clicking on the application name there.
