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I'm setting up a new Win7 box.

Do I need ZA or will Win7 firewall do the job.

What about Microsoft Security Essentials is that good enough? If not what do you recommended?

I'm also behind a router.

MSE is probably fine unless you like to go to porn sites.

There goes all my fun. I'm running it now on two machines
so I guess I'll take MSE over Debbie..............

Back in the day ZoneAlarm was a stable firewall. Now its just very buggy.

Microsoft Security Essentials is great, and I'm not exactly a Microsoft fan. As with any such program you still need to be careful with your por--I mean, web browsing, but as a whole it should eliminate your need to pay for an antivirus.

As for firewalls, I advise against ZoneAlarm. At one point it was almost universally considered excellent by experts, now it's rare to find it called anything above \"average.\" Take a look at your router's built-in firewall - it may or may not be the only firewall you'll need.

Windows firewall + a router is good enough.

Also I've used MSSE before and thought it slowed the launching of applications and extraction of archives a bit much so I switched to Avira Antivir which has a lower impact.

Saw that in the program list you posted which was quit good I must say.

My firewall is so complicated, if I ever finish learning it I could probably put it on my resume...

@ home I just use Avast free edition, @ work we use Symantec Endpoint. I like how non invasive symantec is.

Isaac wrote:My firewall is so complicated, if I ever finish learning it I could probably put it on my resume...

What do you mean? ALL:ALL:deny in your /etc/hosts.deny file, and you're done.


Ontopic:

wolfe, behind a router and windows firewall, you are pretty safe from interest from the outside. If you're using wireless, make sure you're using WPA2 encryption with a strong passphrase (ideally, random characters).

The biggest threat to your security, IMO, are processes running on your machine and opening things up without you're knowledge. Keep an eye on your autostart items, take a look at your process list every once in a while for fishy looking processes, and keep your malware/adware/virus scans up to date. My experience is that most network security breaches happen from the inside, not from the outside for the average user.

snoopy wrote:My experience is that most network security breaches happen from the inside, not from the outside for the average user.

x2 This is pretty much a universal truth of network security.

I have a pic on my website of my router setting I want to add to my post. What code do I use for that?

[img]Link%20in%20the%20middle[/img]

Not sure the firewall is even activated. This is Greek to me.

Looks like it's denying all outside incoming traffic, which is what you want. I'd say it looks good.

That just leaves locking up your wireless so people don't freeload.

Don't allow the WAN ping, the router should just silently drop packets like that.

Krom wrote:Don't allow the WAN ping, the router should just silently drop packets like that.

I don't want to see you post that your router/internet is down because you can't ping your connection from your friends' house.