Anybody can tell me is this a firewall or what? I am using outpost firewall and want to know can this app.(black ice pc protection) ride together with outpost
I believe Black Ice is an intrusion detection system (IDS). I don't know much more than that because I don't use it. I don't know if you're in high risk of attacks or not but if you already have Outpost, Black Ice may be overkill. If you really need a supplement, Prevx is a similar breed of product and the home edition is free.
BlackICE is a firewall with an IDS. Best things about it are that it is easy to use and taked 10 seconds to configure. It ilooks at the data going in and out of a system and identifies things it knows are hacker activity, worms and traoans etc and will block such activity. You can configure access for individual components if you like. It will take a baseline of a system and detect any new apps which try to run or connect to the outside world. It also traces any hacker activity - giving you all the info you need to track them down. If you have a software firewall already you will find that BlackICE sits behind, only picking up bits that get through. The IDS wont work in most cases as the data is blocked by the other firewall. It will let you know if you recieve some worms in email and from browser driveby etc. I have used it for ages and love it.
Running multiple software firewalls on a system is generally a bad idea since it can lead to system instability or prevent either firewall from working fully. As Se7engreen has suggested, a better option for tightening security further would be to add Windows process-monitoring security software like PrevX, Process Guard or System Safety Monitor. Black Ice adds very little that Outpost does not do already - and it has had (and still has) a number of security vulnerabilities.
As of now there is still one unpatched vulnerability - BlackICE PC Protection Filter Bypass (rated as "less critical"). Nevertheless, most other personal firewalls have had a better track record - having a number of serious vulnerabilities in the past suggests poor design and/or coding likely to lead to more problems in the future.
