Norton Personal Firewall 2000 2.0

Norton Personal Firewall (NPF) 2000 is one of the latest offerings by Symantec and is also a part of the Norton Internet Security 2000 software package. With the takeover of AtGuard, Symantec now uses AtGuardÆs firewall technology in its firewall program. The installation of NPF 2000 is straightforward and requires you to restart the machine once. The program gets loaded with Windows and appears on the system tray as a networked earth icon. Double-clicking on the program gives you the all too familiar Symantec product interface.

You can choose to protect your system by marking the Security check box and protect your privacy by check marking the Privacy option. The Privacy option was not considered while giving the overall score-only the firewall was evaluated and the extra features were not part of the final rating.

We downloaded the latest update using the Live Update feature. This update is for the latest rulesets by which NPF 2000 can identify the Trojans and other exploits. By clicking on the Options menu in the configuration window, you can change the program options or view information such as the Event Log or the Statistics of the current connection. The Advanced Options button presents you with a Firewall rule window wherein you can add new rules or modify the existing firewall rules. This option offers you tremendous flexibility and can allow an application to access the Internet at your command. There are large number of decision-making parameter by which you can define a firewall rule. It can be generalised for any application or you can create a rule for a particular application with issues such as ports that are going to be used, the list of services that an application (if specified) can access, etc.

The Statistics window gives what is really happening when you are connected to the Internet. The Firewall TCP Connections and Firewall UDP Datagrams give information on how many packets of data were let in or blocked and the number of packets that were let out or blocked. The Statistics window also shows brief figures of how many firewall rules were made use of and the number of connections that were blocked. The Network Connections data is very useful in determining which applications are connected to the Internet.

The Event Log is where you get the real picture-the spurious connections are logged in here. NPF 2000 records the time of the attack with details of the attack-whether Inbound or Outbound, the type of connection with the port number and the IP address of the attacker.

NPF 2000 fared pretty well during the tests too. At hackerwhacker.com, all the ports were shown as safe (stealth), the software also handled DoS attacks very well and remained stable throughout. It also easily detected port scans for most of the Trojans and prompted you to create a rule if any application tried to access the Internet or if some external computer was trying to access a program on your machine. Other scanners such as Retina and CyberCop Scanner could not detect anything of great concern through their forceful scanning techniques.

Users have to be very careful while creating rules so that they do not give permissions to wrong programs. A home user would rarely invest in a firewall that costs $49.95 (approximately Rs 2,300) and that is where this firewall may lose out. NPF 2000 however, remains a good investment for people who have small networks. Although the interface and the information may disconcert newbies, in terms of features and flexibility, this firewall clearly emerges as one of the best programs.

Others:
McAfee Personal Firewall 2.10
ZoneAlarm 2.1
Sybergen Secure Desktop 2.1.464