Solutions in this chapter:

• Understanding the features of a personal firewall
• Installing and configuring Network Ice BlackICE Defender 2.1
• Installing and configuring Aladdin Networks eSafe 2.2
• Installing and configuring Norton Personal Firewall 2000 2.0
• Installing and configuring ZoneAlarm 2.1

Introduction

Most companies have a firewall in place to protect their information resources but what about home users? What about employees of those same companies who access the corporate network across the Internet via a virtual private network (VPN)? Do they need similar protection? Do those machines often contain sensitive information?

The answer, increasingly, is yes. Attackers will just as soon take over your home machine as one in a big company. It s commonplace for home machines to be probed for common weaknesses. If you decide to install one of the packages (or a similar one) discussed in this chapter, you ll find this out for yourself.

The information presented in this chapter is intended to give you a sense of the products that are available to protect your home computer system. The few products that we have chosen are not a complete list. In fact, they were chosen specifically because of their differences with each other, so one should not be considered better or worse based on the information in this chapter.

In this chapter we ll review some particular personal firewall software packages, and more important, we ll discuss the different types of products marketed as firewalls.

We begin our discussion with the question: What is a personal firewall?