How secure is Norton Personal Firewall?

I'm talking about NPF 2004. Is it one of the easier firewalls to hack? And is that automatic program configuration always bad to have on?

 

Automatic program control should not be used IMO. Some folks say NPF is weak on the outbound protection, but my guess is they have never really used NPF. I use NPF and nothing gets out of my firewall, and i use SSM as another opinion to prove it.

If used and configured properly, NPF should be as safe as most other mass market firewalls. One way to test its hackability is goto http://www.grc.com and try 'shieldsup' to test NPF, you should pass all tests with flying colors.

True NPF may not be the best of the best when it comes to firewalls, but it should provide solid protection for the average users needs.

 

Thanks for the opinion. I'm deciding between Sygate, Tiny, Outpost, and Norton. Using the NOD32 beta for my AV instead of NAV, so I'm leaning towards Sygate, Tiny, or Outpost. But I wanted to ask this question about NPF just in case.

 

Those are some good firewalls. I would probably go with Outpost over NPF if i had the choice. I am still waiting for my year to run out on NPF, then i'll probably go with Outpost or Tiny myself.

 

Norton does rather poorly in the leaktest reviews here (Feb 2004) and here (Aug 2003). Hopefully Symantec have tried to fix the failings since but considering what a pig's ear they made of AtGuard (which is what NPF is based on) when they took over, I'd be rather sceptical.

This is a test of online visibility. Passing it is desireable - but is nowhere near as important as the ability to withstand actual scanning (e.g. NMap) or leaktests (see above).

It performs less capably than some free firewalls (Kerio is probably the best free one) and now has Product Activation meaning you've got problems if Symantec's activation server is offline. Cnet have a (cursory) review of it here.