Product Review: Zone Alarm Pro

I've tried using a number of personal firewalls, including WRQ
AtGuard (since purchased by Symantec), BlackIce and ZoneAlarm. On
my opinion, ZoneAlarm Pro is by far and away the best personal
firewall on the market.

I like this firewall because it is the first product of it's kind
that actually seems to have been designed for normal human computer
users instead of techno-nerds. The product simply installs and
runs. You can use it out of the box with no configuration at all.
The program will ask a few questions and learn from you exactly
what is allowed and not allowed. What could be more simple?

This program is one of the very best defenses against spyware,
which is software that "phones home" every once in a while with
information about you. Unlike most other personal firewalls,
ZoneAlarm Pro (as well as the free version) stops outgoing
transmissions as well as incoming ones. This in itself is a major
benefit to the product.

One of the major advantages to this product is the way you can
configure it to know the difference between intranet and internet
accesses. That's the problem with some competing firewall
products - they do not understand that intranet access is always
to be allowed while internet access must be controlled. ZoneAlarm
made this distinction easily.

One of the problems that has been found with other firewalls is
the "pattern" for determining the identity of something accessing
the internet is the program name. Well, as it turns out, this is
very simple for hacker software to fake. ZoneAlarm was the first
product to recognize and fix the weakness by actually performing a
checksum of the product. This allows ZoneAlarm to be absolutely
sure it has the correct program identified.

One of the absolute coolest things about ZoneAlarm is that it also
protects your system from email viruses. For example, today I
received an email with an attachment. The attachment was a virus,
and it was renamed by ZoneAlarm to make it obvious that it was a
problem. My antivirus software would have caught it as well, but it
was really nice that my firewall stopped the virus even before that
point.

So to sum it all up, yes, I would highly recommend this firewall.
In fact, it is recommended over any other software firewall
product.

Additional Information

Firewalls protect your system
http://www.internet-tips.net/Security/Firewalls.htm

You must protect your system with a personal firewall,
especially if you are using DSL or cable modem.

Products - Sonic WALL
http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/sonicwall.htm
You really want to protect your personal computer? The best
possible firewall solution that I have found is the SonicWall.

Tanstaaf - Spyware
http://www.internet-tips.net/Tanstaafl/spyware.htm
Be careful installing ad supported products - you may find that
you every move on the internet is being watched!