Firewall Installation (Sygate Walkthru)

Firewalls are important to prevent trojans, DOS attacks, and hackers from getting into your system.  At the moment there are lots of free downloadable firewalls, all of which will do a better job than the pre-installed Windows XP firewall.  Which is the best?  Which is the Easiest to Install?  Which do I recommend?  For years I used Tiny Personal Firewall, but I've switched to Sygate personal firewall and I think it's the best free firewall on the market at the moment.  Many people use ZoneAlarm and originally this section was going to be a ZoneAlarm demonstration, but I had to weigh which one I found better and which one I would install on someone's computer if they asked me...the clear choice for me was Sygate's Personal Firewall.  It runs like most firewalls, but I found it to be more stable than ZA, less of a resource hog, and while it gives up some things in the way of an easy display, it works effectively and doesn't crash on me, which I've had ZA do on more than one occasion.  So, I'm going to recommend Sygate Firewall and give some brief instruction on how to install and operate it.

First you need to download it here :  Sygate Personal Firewall

It will be a file named spf.exe, just double click this program and it will install and then reboot

Once you reboot you'll have Sygate on your system as your firewall.  They ask that you fill in a registration form, just do it, it's freeware, so I figure a free registration isn't that much to ask. (Note if you don't want mail, etc from them, use a free email account that you should have set up for internet things).

     Now here are a few screens you'll have to become familiar with and that you should know what they mean.  The way this firewall works is by asking you which programs you want to allow to have access to your computer.  So for example:

This is the window that popped up when I opened my Mozilla Web Browser...the firewall basically asked, "Hey, stupid, do you want this program to have access to the internet"  I wanted this program to have access so I clicked the "Remember my answer, and do not ask me again for this application" box and I hit Yes.  By checking the box the firewall knew that his was an application that I would always want to allow internet access...so it created a rule that allows this program to always access the internet when I launch it. 

During the first day of having a firewall, any firewall, you'll have to answer a number of these type questions, that's alright though, because the firewall will remember which applications you approve of and which you don't want to run.  If you get a warning like the one above for a program you don't want accessing the net, you just click the box and hit NO and then a rule will be created to prevent that program from accessing the net.

The firewall will rest in your system tray near the clock on your taskbar and it's icon will look like this  when you double click this icon in the system tray you'll open up the control panel for the program and that will look something like this:

There is lots of things you can do here but I'll give you a brief rundown of the most important functions:

If you want to stop all internet traffic, basically meaning to shut off all the incoming and outgoing information, click Block All

The Applications button basically will give you a list of applications that you've allowed to have access to the internet, in this section you can change the settings for particular applications.  So if you accidentally blocked Internet Explorer you can go here to unblock it.

The Logs button will give you a listing of the recorded attacks or traffic that happened to your computer...this is good if you want to look at a detailed report of what came in and out and what was blocked.

Test button will take you to the Sygate website where you can have them scan your ports to see if this firewall is working.  You can also go to www.grc.com and try the Shields Up Test...Steve Gibson runs this webpage and really does a good job in making people aware of security risks.  I've run the leaktest from grc.com on this firewall and it passed...but you might want to try the leak test yourself.

The cool looking graph thing, umm, is just a cool looking graph thing...just like a heart monitor shows the incoming and outgoing traffic in a blip blip blip type display.  I have to prevent myself from screaming, "Oh my god, my computer has flatlined"  umm, okay, sorry for the rambling thought.

Running applications shows you what programs are currently accessing or trying to access the internet...as you can see I have IE and Mozilla running and I have Realplayer blocked, okay so, umm, I did that just as an example, but I hate realplayer so it was fun to block them.

The "Show Message Console" shows you the messages that Sygate sent you...so for example if someone attacked my computer Sygate would say something like, "Port blocked.." blah blah blah.

That's the basics of Sygate Firewall...they have a good help section if you have any questions and you can do advanced rules by going to Tools ----> Advanced Rules and then you can write personal rule sets for this firewall.  Example would be to block a specific IP, that you can do in the advanced rules area.  A really nice feature that you won't find on the free ZoneAlarm.

So, install your firewall and save yourself from the big mean old nasty people on the net :o)