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Welcome to the I Security Labs Firewalls page. On this page we have tested popular firewalls and given a brief summary of the review. The rest of the review is available for download in .pdf format. Please note that we may have made some pricing mistakes and other mistakes in our reviews. If we ever find a correction, an alert will be displayed on this page. Update: Agnitum no longer sell the version of Outpost Pro that we tested and they have created a new site in the UK. The price of Outpost is £39.99 and the address is www.agnitum.co.uk . We may have displayed the price in the review incorrectly, we apologise for this change.
Marking Scheme
We mark these tests for Performance, Features, Test Results, Ease of Use and Value For Money. We perform various tests on the firewalls stealthing and application handling abilities. We also award the top three firewalls with Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. Highly Recommended Firewalls that didn’t reach top marks get the Recommended award, which shows that the firewall is good but missed out on top marks. The results can be seen in the table below from the highest mark to the lowest mark. If you would like to read the very long and full marking scheme click here.
Best Firewalls
GOLD AWARD- Agnitum Outpost Pro
SILVER AWARD- Sygate Personal Firewall
BRONZE AWARD- Zone Labs Zone Alarm Pro
RECOMMENDED- Sygate Personal Firewall Pro
RECOMMENDED- Kerio Personal Firewall
RECOMMENDED- Symantec Norton Personal Firewall
Dates
This page was created in March 2004 using reviews and information that were made in January 2004, so we can’t guarantee that all prices and information is correct. The reviews have already been zipped and turned into PDF’s so we can’t modify the reviews if we have made an error
Results
Click on a firewall for more info and the option to download the firewalls full review or download this file which contains a review for every firewall.
ISS Black Ice PC Protection, $39.95-
Maker: ISS
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/NT4/2000/XP
Website http://blackice.iss.net
Summary:
A very weak firewall that has strange ways of dealing with things. Its difficult to understand because of having separate interfaces that aren't very clear. We couldn't even set up rules to block ICMP Echo Requests either which is useless. This program should only be offered for free because of its iffy protection and hardly any advanced features. For people who want secure and straight forward protection, we suggest you try something else.
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Computer Associates E-Trust EZ Firewall, $39.95-
Maker: Computer Associates
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Website http://www.my-etrust.com
Summary:
EZ Firewall is a very strong and feature rich Personal Firewall. It performs quite well and is very simple to use. EZ Firewall looks exactly the same and has exactly the same features as Zone Alarm Pro but EZ Firewall performs a bit better. EZ Firewall is basically Zone Alarm Pro under a different name. We prefer EZ Firewall to Zone Alarm Pro because its $10 cheaper and it doesn't slow your system down as much. A good strong firewall that will please both advanced and beginners in internet security.
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Sistech Green Bow Personal Firewall, 29 Euros-
Maker: Sistech
Compatibility: Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000 (We used XP and it worked)
Website http://www.thegreenbow.com
Summary:
The Green Bow Personal Firewall is a small and easy to use firewall that runs quietly in the background. It blocked all of our Inward tests and one of our outbound tests. The test results are quite good and the price isn't bad either but the product lets itself down on performance. It slows down your internet connection speed quite a bit. This firewall is good for a user who wants straight forward protection but some people might find the product a bit to easy due to the lack of more advanced features such as Ad Blocking. For this firewall to achieve full stealth we had to put a check box in "Hide My Computer From The Internet". Free alternatives with the same ability as this product can be found.
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Farstone Hacker Smacker, $29.99-
Maker: Sistech
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/NT4/2000/XP
Website http://www.farstone.com
Summary:
Hacker Smacker has more features than some of the free firewalls but the main feature doesn't work. Its protection isn't very good and the interface looks very cheap and not very professional. We even had trouble using Internet Explorer with Hacker Smacker because it said that it had allowed it to connect to the internet but all we got was "Page Cannot Be Displayed" so we had to change our default browser to Mozilla. This could be a possible issue with Internet Explorer or our Antivirus Program which protects IE from infected downloads. It also blocks Netscape from accessing the internet. We tryed to fix the open ports ourself because Hacker Smacker wasn't blocking the offending programs but there were no options to manually block programs, you had to wait till Hacker Smacker prompted you. If you have money to spend on a firewall, we suggest you spend it on something else or get a free solution which performs much better.
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Kerio Personal Firewall, Free-
Maker: Kerio
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Website http://www.kerio.com
Summary:
Kerio offers superb protection and best of all is free but sadly some of the advanced features are disabled in the free version. We had to do quite a lot of tweaking to achieve full stealth so if you don't know much about firewalls then this program is useless to you. By the way, the program only managed to block Too Leaky and Firehole because it has a useful function that prompts you when an application launches another. This firewall does not have Component Control!
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Mcafee Personal Firewall Plus, £29.95-
Maker: Network Associates/Mcafee
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Website http://uk.mcafee.com
Summary:
Mcafee is strong and quite easy to use, it also provides a lot of information about the security of your system. Mcafee Personal Firewall Plus integrates well with other Mcafee Products because it has a main interface that tells you all Mcafee Products you have installed (and other companies as well) and gives you links to the programs which you can configure the products installed. It also gives you an overall security rating taking into consideration all products you have installed. Mcafee is a bit resource heavy for slower machines so this is something to bare in mind. Mcafee didn't block all our tests and you can get Freeware that has the same ability as Mcafee. Mcafee is a straight forward and easy to use program but some people may find it limiting due to the absence of some more advanced features.
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Symantec Norton Personal Firewall 2004, £44.99-
Maker: Norton
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Website http://www.symantec.co.uk
Summary:
Norton is a very well presented and easy to use firewall. It has very strong Inward protection and powerful Outbound protection that passed our three leak tests. The price lets it down when alternatives can be found that are cheaper. We did have to turn on the program component control during the tests to Block Too Leaky And Firehole. Norton is very resource heavy for computers that don't have much hard disk space and slower than the newest models so this would be something to think about before buying. A brilliant secure firewall but with some bad points.
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Omniquad Personal Firewall, Free-
Maker: Omniquad
Compatibility: This information was not provided by the maker.
Website http://www.omniquad.com
Summary:
Omniquad is a free firewall with a pretty good email protection feature. Thats all really on the features side and it didn't do very well in any of the tests either. The firewall has a cheap and sloppy looking interface that isn't really very easy to understand. The firewall didn't perform well in our tests because it failed to stop Echo Requests and Stealth Port 1. We couldn't find any options to block these. The full stealth mode of the firewall just blocks everything and we didn't think the firewall worked very well because quite a few times we had to quit and restart the firewall to access websites. Although this firewall is free its not really worth the download. Download a stronger free program or fetch your wallet out and buy one of the strong firewalls we have tested here.
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Agnitum Outpost Pro, £39.99-
Maker: Agnitum
Compatibility: Windows 98/98SE/Me/NT4/2000/XP.
Website http://www.agnitum.co.uk
Summary:
A good looking program, with strong outbound and inward protection that passed all of our testing. Although not the easiest to use of programs, even beginners can learn how to use it in good time. We had no problems whatsoever using the program and its fairly light on resources. We didn't have to tinker with any settings to achieve the results.
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Preventon Pro, £24.99-
Maker: Preventon
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP.
Website: http://www.preventon.com
Summary:
Preventon is quite strong, cheap, performs well and is very easy to use, the perfect mix. Sadly it doesn't have any advanced features so this might put some people off. If you are looking for plain and simple protection that shields you quietly, Preventon is perfect for you. Some free alternatives to Preventon can be found such as Kerio but they aren't as easy to setup. Some people may want better Outbound Controls because the Outbound Controls on Preventon are pretty simple and couldn't detect our leaktests that hijack trusted applications to connect to the internet.
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Sygate Personal Firewall, Free-
Maker: Sygate
Compatibility: Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000/XP.
Website: http://soho.sygate.com
Summary:
Sygate is a very strong firewall that passed ALL of our tests. It is fairly easy to learn how to use and very light on system resources. On top of all this the program is free. This program is a must have for anyone who wants a brilliantly secure, relatively easy to use and free firewall. Absolutely brilliant!
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Sygate Personal Firewall Pro, £24.96-
Maker: Sygate
Compatibility: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP.
Website: http://soho.sygate.com
Summary:
The firewall did very well in outbound protection testing and inward protection testing. It doesn't take up much system resources so its a very good contender in the firewall market. It is a shame that there isn't a few more advanced features in the firewall. We had to tweak the settings a tiny bit to block Too Leaky and Firehole.
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Windows XP Firewall, Included with Windows XP-
Maker: Microsoft
Compatibility: Windows XP.
Website: http://www.microsoft.com
Summary:
The Windows XP Firewall isn't to bad but it doesn't have any outbound filtering. The Windows XP Firewall is going to be updated when Windows XP Service Pack 2 comes out, so who knows, it might be better after the update. Your better off with another free firewall than this one, but it is useful to have if your firewall ever stops working or your updating your firewall. We turned it on when testing some of the firewalls that weren't so strong, so that our computer was still fully protected.
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Zone Alarm, Free-
Maker: Zone Labs
Compatibility: Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP.
Website: http://www.zonelabs.com
Summary:
Zone Alarm may not have a lot of features, but its a secure and free solution to protect your computer, thats all that matters. If your a beginner and what something thats simple and secure, try Zone Alarm. If your willing to pay of course, get Zone Alarm Pro, packed with more features. We didn't have to tinker with any settings to achieve the results. If your computer isn't the latest specification Zone Alarm isn't worth it though.
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Zone Alarm Pro, $49.95-
Maker: Zone Labs
Compatibility: Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP.
Website: http://www.zonelabs.com
Summary:
Zone Alarm Pro is much better than the free version, with better outbound protection and lots more features. In some ways, Zone Alarm Pro is very similar to Norton Personal Firewall. Zone Alarm used to be better than it is now, but sadly Zone Labs have made their firewall to resource hungry and many people have had problems.
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