An Introduction to the Vista Compatible Comodo Firewall 3

One of the highest rated firewalls for Windows PC's, Comodo Firewall Pro, is about release a new version that brings its unparalleled firewall security to Windows Vista. Currently in beta, version 3.0 of Comodo Firewall Pro gives you incredible control over not only what programs access the internet, but also what programs are even allowed to execute. It's a much more powerful version of Vista's User Account Control, but with the option to make it much less annoying. You can choose to allow programs that are signed with a certificate to run without obstruction while requiring less trusted applications to ask permission. Not only is this firewall one of the most secure, it's completely free. The beta can be downloaded through the Comodo forums and only requires a free sign up.

The first thing you'll want to have a look at after installing the firewall is the levels of protection available to you. The five firewall options are: Block All, Custom, Learn Safe Only, Learn All, and Allow All. The first option, Block All, is fairly straightforward. It just stops all network traffic to and from your machine completely, without alerting you of attempts to access it.

The second option, and my favorite, is Custom and this is the setting with the finest granularity. What this setting allows you to do is have the firewall alert you as often or a little as you like depending on the alert settings you choose in the firewall security screen. When an alert from Comodo Firewall pops up from your task bar, it will give you the option to allow the connection, deny it or to treat the program attempting the connection according to a predefined set of rules (Browsers, FTP programs, e-mail clients and so on). It also gives you the option to save your choice and continue to treat the application in this particular manner until you manually change the rule associated with it. Now, the most interesting part of this is that you can, by setting the alert levels I mentioned, have the firewall block programs from specific ports or protocols while allowing use of others. All without having to create the rules manually, which is required in the firewall shipped with Windows Vista and Windows XP. Thus freeing you from the need to figure out what a program is going to try before you even run it.

The next option, Learn Safe Only, is the more user friendly setting. This rarely sets off an alert as it allows applications from trusted publishers to execute and access the network. Programs like Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook, for example, won't set off those alerts and let average users do their work without pausing to consider whether a program is trustworthy enough to allow outside the firewall's protection. Learn all, on the other hand tells the firewall to explicitly trust all access and even create rules for it. This setting should be avoided as a general rule unless running in a completely trusted environment and even then only for a short time to train the firewall to ignore the programs currently running. Allow All is simply that, it makes the firewall transparent when you need the entire system to have unfettered access or to see if the firewall is causing a connectivity problem.

There's a great deal more in Comodo Firewall Pro that makes it an excellent security tool, especially for us beleaguered Windows Vista users that have few options when it comes to compatible firewalls. The Defense+ security measures are an entire topic on their own as is the very active community in the forums that's always wiling to help.