The Dreaded Personal Firewall

For personal or small network use, a router or NAT device appears to
provide good protection against incoming threats.

So, it appears that the true role of a personal firewall would be to
control outgoing connections.

The winning combination for me has been Kereo Firewall, Spy Sweeper and
some Antivirus. The problem for me is that Kereo can be confusing and
intimidating for some users.

Norton Internet Security 2006 claims to combine all these features.
Anyone here have experience with NIS06? Does NIS06 do a good job of
restricting outgoing connections and blocking spyware/malware?

I have had bad experiences with these Norton suites in that the slow
the computer and sometimes block network traffic for no apparent
reason.

I like the idea of using a Symantec product since when there is an
outbreak, Symantec is where everyone goes for the fix. Norton aims for
transparency, which is also a plus when dealing with shaky users on our
company network.

The funny thing is most of us don't need PFs or even spyware blockers.
There's just this one woman who seems to be a magnet for everything bad
on the net. She must open and install everything that comes her way.

A solution I have considered is to upgrade to XP Pro and make her a
restricted user. No installation of anything, ever.

I was excited to try the new Outpost firewall, but was let down when it
let in spyware while refusing to learn which apps are trusted.
Received on Tue Feb 7 20:58:05 2006