A firewall is the most confusing aspect of computer security for the novice. Most of us know what an anti virus or anti spyware tool does. But the action of a firewall is not immediately apparent. For the truly ignorant – no a firewall doesn’t stop computer fires! We hope you never go that route.
Basically a firewall is either a software or hardware that blocks malicious attacks on your computer that come through the internet. All you need is to be connected to the internet for the attacks to begin. It doesn’t matter if your browser is closed and you are not really using the computer. There are millions of zombie like PCs on the internet constantly scanning the net to find a vulnerable computer. Its like a car thief walking down a road and trying every car door. Sooner or later he will find an open one. If your computer is connected to the internet they will find you and fast.
Without a firewall you will probably last five minutes before your machine has a malware on it. Anti virus wont protect you in this case.You need a firewall. The good news is if you are using Windows XP or Vista there is an inbuilt firewall to protect your machine. If you have a broad band router then by default it also should have its own firewall. But sometimes this is still not enough. Many anti virus programmes include their own firewall and these are very uptodate and effective. Check out your antivirus and see if it has complete internet protection. That should include a firewall.
If you just want to check if your windows firewall is on then go to the control panel and click on firewall to see if ON is checked.
If you want a free firewall then zone alarm is the way to go. I tried it out but uninstalled as obviously I wasn’t one happy customer. It started off well but then it started blocking just about every site I accessed and I didn’t want to always fiddle with the grant access controls. That got on my nerves so I uninstalled. Others swear by it. Let me know what you think.
