Firewall Overview Learn how to secure (and test) your connection

• A firewall should monitor incoming and outgoing traffic (windows XP firewall initially monitored incoming traffic only )
• Some firewalls are more secure than others (stateful packet inspection, ICSA Certified, etc)
• Most firewalls do not protect against viruses
• All firewalls require administration (set-up configuration, updates, making holes for applications)
• Some firewalls have the option of being configured only after an administrative password is entered.  This might be useful, if you want to limit what other users (kids) can do to change your firewall.
  
• Change the default administrative password included in a purchased firewall
• Event logs – how do you want to handle these?
• Many “alerts” come from infected machines doing random scanning
• You can traceroute IP#’s and search for info on Port Numbers

For more information -

• Howstuffworks - a tutorial about firewalls.
• PC Magazine reviews of firewalls.
• PC Magazine article about best 2012 security suites.
• PC Magazine reviews for Security Suites.
• EPIC  - Tools for protecting Online Privacy . links to personal firewalls, anonymizers, etc.
• ICSA Labs - tests and certifies firewalls.

To help read the logs / alerts from firewalls...

• dshield - integrates the logs of many firewalls.
• Port Numbers - Official list from IANA
• You can also search for "port xxx" using google

Example Firewall Set-ups:

Testing Your Current Security

• Partial tests: Shields up
• Comprehensive tests: Hackerwacker , Security Space Audit ,
• Wireshark - Power users may want to try this  free network analyzer which lets you examine packet level data from a live network connection.  This could be used to examine exactly what is being communicated to/from your PC.

Security breaches and hacker techniques

• Security Focus , CERT .Packetstorm ,