Firewall Recommendations

Hey guys. I'm currently running the latest version of Comodo free, and I've been using it for several years now. For the most part, it has behaved well with my security setup (AIS, MBAM Pro, Sandboxie). With the older version (5.8 or 5.7), I had issues with it crashing, but 5.9 seems to have fixed it. Last year when I reformatted my HDD and reinstalled Comodo, I set it D+ to "paranoid mode", which ended up hanging the system and corrupting Avast, requiring a clean install of Avast each time it happened, until I dropped the level to "safe mode." Besides that, Comodo has been fine.

I'm always looking to make my setup more secure, and I've been reading good things about OA. A lot of comments point to OA being lighter, updated with bug fixes more often, and more secure when it comes to leak tests.

I'm thinking about buying OA Premium, but is it worth the money, in your opinions? Is its security comparable to Comodo? How effective is the HIPS at detecting and stopping threats?

I'd appreciate any feedback on OA you can give!

 

OA...Premium and even free version...is fantastic and powerful firewall with excellent and sensitive HIPS module. It's my favourite firewall with proactive protection module.
Unfortunately latest version update from few weeks ago crashed my systems and OA forced me to leave it...of course your experience can be absolutely different

 

I would suggest you try private firewall, Look n stop firewall and spyshelter firewall.........

 

All FW that you have mentioned (except PFW) one can find in my signature There are really great apps...but the questions was about OA, and my answer was about OA

 

yes the question was indeed about oa.....but you can surely understand from my previous post that I don't like oa much .......the op asked if oa is strong enough and how it's when compared to comodo , if it's worth paying......so rather than negatively marking oa in each of the answers.....I thought I'd show some positiveness and offer op some good alternatives.......

 

I'm sorry...you are right in this context

 

glad you understood.....

 

In the future, you might want to make sure that the topic you assign is appropriate to the information you are seeking. Your topic -- "Firewall Recommendations" -- seems to open the door to any & all FW suggestions. Not just OA.

 

Just curious, didn't the AIS FW part cause conflicts with CIS?
On OA, I've been using the free version since years to my satisfaction and the paid version since a couple of months (on 2 different boxes, 1 PC, 1 laptop).
I've had very few issues, most of them in the early years.
All just anecdotal experience but I'd say run the free version for some time and then decide on purchase.
On comparison with CIS/Comodo, OA doesn't offer exactly the same (like Comodo's sandbox) but regarding the OA HIPS, it's more user friendly in my experience and imo comparable regarding effectiveness.
To avoid conflicts I wouldn't advice using OA together with AIS though.

 

Personally, I'd like to hear your negative opinions on OA. There's lots of negativity floating around about both OA and CIS but I'm always interested in reading comments about them.

Look n' Stop only appreas to be a firewall, not a HIPS. Even though I use SBIE for browsing, I'm too paranoid to leave it to chance that something gets installed in my sandbox before I clear it, or something jumps out of the sandbox somehow. But I think it might be something to recommend to friends/family who simply cannot deal with HIPS.

Privatefirewall and Spyshelter look interesting, something I'd like to give a try at some point (maybe in a VM, or on a spare PC). Spyshelter seems like it's aimed more at blocking various loggers - how does it hold up against malicious software/code/vulnerabilities?

I actually uninstalled the AIS firewall about a month after running both AIS and CIS together. It didn't seem to conflict at all, though. The AIS 6 firewall seemed a lot weaker than CIS so I didn't think twice about uninstalling it.

With the CIS sandbox, isn't the point of it mainly to reduce the popups presented to users? So when CIS does a cloud lookup and doesn't find a match, it automatically sandboxes a program? OA would just show more popups in this case then, right?

 

I think OA is a great program and offers terrific performance and features.

Unfortunately (for me) over the past year or so the program (free and paid) has become problematic on my XP Pro SP3 system. High CPU usage for relatively long periods causing the fans to spool up unacceptably. Others with similar systems have not necessarily experienced the same issues.

I've never had anything like that with PrivateFirewall which is my other favorite FW/HIPS/Anti-Logger program.

I would definitely recommend trying OA. Chances are you'll be very pleased and if for some reason you aren't, it uninstalls without leaving any issues (in my experience). PrivateFirewall would be my other recommendation.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

 

Sorry Bellgamin...I probably didn't understand you
Please look at this

Did I make some mistake?

 

ichito, I think Bill intended his comment for the original poster...the thread starter.

He meant that it was unclear from the thread title (and original post) whether he only wished to discuss OA or other alternatives as well.
(Which is why he suggested being clearer n future.)

In any case, some good info is being provided and all is well imho.

 

never heard spyshelter firewall , is light?

thanks

 

True true, oh sooo true. {My senior moments are coming closer & closer together nowadays. }

 

OpenBSD firewall appliance

 

No matters bellgamin...I can understand you

It's light and first for all the powerful anti-logger with HIPS and Firewall modules...it's realy worth to consider

 

After spending a night tinkering with OA, I'm already getting frustrated!

First, I like the interface; it seems more organized than Comodo's. Most of the programs I'm running were whitelisted automatically, aside from a few 'obscure' programs, a file sync program, and some HP software, which was nice. I also like how it announces when programs connect to the internet, and resolving IPs automatically is a great feature (something Comodo really needs).

OA seems a bit heavier than Comodo: ~35MB for OA's processes vs ~6MB for Comodo's. It doesn't seem to be causing a slowdown though - actually some programs seem a bit snappier with OA.

Also, it doesn't seem to be playing nice with Sandboxie... when I launch Chrome in SBIE, it automatically gets executed with "RunSafer" (green border around the window). Sometimes the entire system simply locks up and becomes totally unresponsive immediately after Chrome opens up (sandboxed). Chrome is not set to "RunSafer", and when I run it without SBIE, it does not get the green border around it. I'm not sure if RunSafer is the cause of the system locking up, but seeing as there were incompatibilities in the past between SBIE, Chome and RunSafer, that's my first guess.

 

I don't remember that "Run Safer" mode is obligatory...it was always optional feature Maybe you have done some mistake in first popup-alert?
Running apps both in Sbie and RS mode can give some conflicts. You should open the list of aplications, find Chrome processes, mark them all and chose "run in normal mode" from RBM or from button in the bottom of screen.

 

Sandboxie has an option to "drop rights" of programs running in the sandbox. If you have this option enabled and OA's option to display the coloured border is enabled, sandboxed programs will show the green border.

 

In Sandboxie, open Sandboxie Control and under configuration make sure that you check the Online Armor box.

In OA, go to Programs and check what is running under run safer. You can deselect those programs you want to run normally.

Also, under the options tab, you can select or deselect the option to run all unknown programs "safer" automatically.

Stick with it. Much of it is just getting used to the choices and interface.

If you decide it's not for you, I'd have a look at PrivateFirewall next. It runs with much less CPU and RAM expenditure and still has many or most of the features albeit in a less updated UI.

 

Ah, that makes sense - I was wondering why this behavior was happening, even though Chrome was set to run normally. Good to know!

Still having issues though - sometimes I can load Chrome with SBIE and it works, other times it just stalls (it doesn't even finish rendering the homepage, it simply freezes). When Chrome stalls, I can't close the browser, open SBIE, or OA. Windows just completely locks up shortly after, and trying to shut down/restart has no effect. The only way to shut down is to manually power off. Even when I'm able to get Chrome to run in SBIE, afterwards when I try shutting down, windows just won't shut down. It hangs at the "Windows is shutting down..." screen until I manually power off.

I've added exclusions for all three security programs I'm running (OA, Avast and MBAM), so they should not be conflicting with one another. I thought it might be DEP (running EMET), but there's nothing in the event viewer logs to indicate an issue. I upgraded from SBIE 3.64 to the latest beta, still no dice. What the heck am I missing?

 

I am interested in your recommendation of Private Firewall since I have been considering it for my laptop with XPsp3 and AviraFree and MBAM Pro and Windows Firewall. However, I only have dialup internet so concerned about adding anything that would put a drag on browsing.

Please explain, if you think that Private FW would offer more benefit than Windows Firewall. And, would Private FW slow my browsing on dailup.

I will appreciate everyone's comments on this.

Thank you for the help.

 

Is Spyshelter FW lighter than Private FW and Windows XP Firewall.

 

You can try it and see how it works for you. (It will shut off the Windows Firewall automatically.)

If it seems to drag too much you can remove it easily with the built in uninstall.

I would be hesitant to recommend SpyShelter (based upon my own experience but others may be able to provide further info).

Also, it might be better for you to start a new thread rather than risk hijacking this one.