Do You Think the Firewall Should Be Made Easier?

I've been an eset customer for quite a number of years now and I absolutely love your products since the early days of nod32, when it was slightly less than userfriendly. Over the years though you made Nod32 as easy as installing it and forgetting about it and with the combination of its small footprint, it truly is unbeatable in the world of security suites that too often slugs the end user performance wise. ( Norton, here's looking at you especially)

Now, while I can use the interactive mode of the firewall, I just find it extremely annoying as it prompts for absolutely everything relating to an outgoing connection, even common microsoft apps that most other firewalls on the market don't prompt for. I can understand the firewall asking me for permission for un-common third party programs but how about some rules built in that already allow communication with common apps like web browsers, email clients, microsoft windows, host process, etc etc.

I can understand expert users wishing for full customization options and I am not saying we should scrape that but just make it so there is an expert mode and a standard interactive mode. What I would like to see is another mode for those of us who prefer semi-control over the two-way firewall with peace of mind that automatic filtering doesn't really provide.

I do realize that Eset Total Security is still in its infancy and already it is an amazing suite with a great firewall. But just remember that Nod32 really took off when it was made alot more user-friendly without sacrificing its powerful features. No doubt we will be seeing some improvements to the firewall in the future but if you ask me, all it really needs is another interactive mode for people that like to set and forget and only annoyed when its absolutely necessary.

 

Maybe you are right, but there always at least two sides. Imagine what if the virus, trojan or whatever, signed as a browser or something could freely operate on somebodys PC. and that somebody, if something will happen, will blame the antivirus or firewall, but not himself. So i think the 5 modes of firewall is good enough.

 

Hello,

I think you've got this thread in the wrong forum section. It should be in ESET Smart Security forum section.

Regards,

Mark.

 

Actually, I'd argue that the root of the problem is an even bigger issue - and that is that it's so lacking in documentation as to exactly how it works that you are mostly configuring it by guess and by golly, making it seem harder and more confusing than it probably is. When the sum total of the technical documentation on something as complicated as a comprehensive firewall is a little more than a compilation of the application mouseover "tips", it's bound to be ugly.

And frankly, technical support hasn't been very helpful so far.

And while that might not matter to the average home user who isn't going to be likely to know what to do with it anyway so who really cares, it's just not acceptable.

 

There is a school of thought that says Software firewalls actually are worse than no firewall, because they can give users a false sense of security.

Indeed, there are so many ways for a smart process to bypass a firewall.

Imagine a virus that gets on your PC and gets your webbrowser to load up a page such as http://www.remotewebsite.com/the/creditcard/details/are/1224-1234-1234-1234

All the info the virus is wants to transmit is encoded in that URL, which will be captured in the remote webservers logs. The firewall won't stop it, as Microsoft IE will already have been in your trusted list for network connections.

I think of my ESET firewall as another protection point, but I'm also aware it only has a very limited range of things it can detect "leaking" network requests/info.

Anyway, to the original posters point: It's very, very hard to have a total list of all "trusted" apps. Every time you download a Windows update the hashes of various files change. Every time you update Skype, Firefox, etc etc. Applications you consider common would be very exotic in China. Or India. You get the idea.

I have seen a few FW applications attempt to hold such a DB and it has come success with Windows Apps and other things. But I didn't consider it cut down on the real amount of popups. Especially in this day and age when every app you run is network enabled.

Whitelist/Blacklists are always very hard to maintain correctly. Thus the amount of input required to do it well.

 

Im totally agree with you muppetman, except one thing, in a right hands the software firewall is better than nothing. And of course there is no 100% security even with physical firewall.

 

Sorry if I gave you the impression I don't think this.

If you have a good software firewall that you know and understand well, then you are much better protected than the user who has the same software firewall but really isn't too sure...

 

Agree totally
ESET approach is OK if a PC is run in administrator mode and only used by a expert (who knows how to respond to the pop ups and has the time to do so when they occur). I look after 5 computers, mostly used but novices or people I don't want to give administrator access to. And frankly the ESET approach is a pain in the but for this type of use.

I tried to suggest a solution over a year ago https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=197335
Similar opinion expressed in PC Mag review http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343655,00.asp
Which has been discussed here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1431594#post1431594