Personal Firewall

To protect yourself from hackers and intruders you will need to install a firewall.

There are two types of firewalls, hardware and software, both of which can accomplish the same goal, to protect you from un-authorized access to your home computer or network if you have more than one computer.

Software Firewalls

Most firewall software come as a fully functional 30 day trial version. Once you download them, installation is mostly straight forward and the configuration is performed using a wizard. Make sure to understand what the configuration software is asking you. A firewall is worthless if it is not configured properly.

Once it is configured, it should automatically start every time you start or restart your computer.

This firewall will only protect the computer it is installed on, if you have other computers you must install and configure the firewall software on them as well.

Here are some of the most famous firewall software:

McAfee Firewall, Norton Personal Firewall and Zone Alarm Pro. All those firewalls accomplish basically the same thing. We prefer Zone Alarm Pro, it is highly configurable and is very easy to setup.

Hardware firewalls

Hardware firewalls are usually used to protect networks. If you have more than one computer at home or at the office, consider installing one. Depending on the manufacturer, they can be easy to install, reading instructions will have you setup in no time.

Most hardware firewalls are configurable using your browser. The only somewhat difficult part is that you have to physically re-wire your network cables going from your LAN hub or switch to your Cable or DSL modem.

Hardware firewalls have their pros and cons. They can handle a lot more traffic without affecting performance on your computer. You are also more isolated inside your network. You don't have to purchase separate licenses for each computer, you can protect one or two hundred computers using one firewall box.

For the average user that wants to surf the web and protect their files, we recommend the software firewall. It is downloadable, easy to setup and configure and offers a free trial version.