Zone Alarm vs. XP Firewall

[smoore]

I'm not a windows guru by any stretch of the imagination. I have a linux based hardware device firewalling my network set to a pretty loose damn policy (allow all stateful outbound). I don't want to change that. We run XP firewall on all of our Windows machines (family).

Is there any reason to use Zone Alarm?

[AEKDBet]

The beauty of Zone Alarm is that any program or service that has not yet received permission to access the internet, must do so.

You can get more advanced by setting it to only access trused ip ranges etc.


From this you will be best suited to answer original question. (I hope)

[Meech]

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Is there any reason to use Zone Alarm?

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Only if you feel the need to block software from "phoning home" IMO.

IMO, never trust MS or Windows to keep you secure. Zone Alarm is a great firewall and it's free.

[Meech]

[ QUOTE ]
IMO, never trust MS or Windows to keep you secure. Zone Alarm is a great firewall and it's free.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are behind a NAT and/or a hardware firewall ZA is more likely than not overkill unless you don't trust the other computers on your private network. There are exceptions of course.

The windows XP firewall does a fine job of keeping hackers out. It's shortcoming is that's all it does. It does not allow you to configure security for outgoing traffic.

[Felipe]

zone alarm and emule don't mix (if you use emule). If you want zonealarm, pm me.

[ QUOTE ]
If you are behind a NAT and/or a hardware firewall ZA is more likely than not overkill unless you don't trust the other computers on your private network. There are exceptions of course.

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OP says he has it set fairly loosely. Otherwise, I agree with you. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]