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Do I need Zone Alarm? 1

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sazebac

Technical User
Apr 16, 2003
117
US
I've got a computer on which I just installed Norton AV 2003, and the machine has Windows XP Home. I have heard that XP has it's own software firewall. My question is do I also need ZA in addition to NAV and the firewall that XP already has? Thanks.
 
NAV is antivirus, and antivirus is a must, not to be confused with a Firewall.

XP Home has a firewall - I think all MS OS's since W2K ship with it, but have you got it enabled, and can you configure it?

ZA is an easy to configure and effective firewall for most uses, especailly if your just using it for home computing

HTH
Paul

It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...
 
I have Wix XP & Zone Alarm. Should I use Zone Alarm alone or also Win XP's firewall?

Thanks
Bruce
 
Bruce,
both, if they work together. I haven't used ZA or ZAP with XP, though I've come across clients who use ZA on XP, but never had time to see what way it's configured

Paul


It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...
 
I'm not sure why you would suggest he use two firewalls because it's redundant. It's like putting two doors in one door frame. Everytime you leave your house, you have to open two doors, when one is usually enough.

I would also suggest you disable XP's Firewall and use ZoneAlarm.
 
VQIS,

Why use two AV products? to be sure, to be sure.

Some security products can be exploited, and if one's all you got, and its gone, you're wide open.

I said if they work together, why not.

Personally I have a firewalled router, and I still run ZA on my clients, why ... just!

Paul

It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...
 
Thanks for the opions. It made it clear as mud for me, but I have tried running both together & get no OBVIOUS problems, but was wondering about hidden problems. I can get around a computer pretty well, but am not a byte pusher.

Thx
Bruce
 
PaulTEG,

That sounds a little paranoid to me. You asked why not? Because of the resources it takes. Your computer and network would run faster without two of anything.

Sure software and hardware have bugs, but as an educated consumer, I would hope we would all research before we bought anything. In this case, ZoneAlarm has a great history.

It sounds a little paranoid to me, but whatever suits your fancy.

Regards,

John

Vision Quest Information Solutions
 
My suggestion after having ZA on 5 different systems is no.
If you get a good quality router, for the most part you wont need a firewall.
I was a very big proponent and tried to find resolves to ZA until I was told that my OS was not supported. All but one system is Win2K Adv Server. The one that is not, is xp.
I have this set for the kids and by lack of ambition have both the internal and za still enabled. It also has NAV.
All function as advertised, but it is behind a very router.

If you go to the router option, the NetGear RP614 is very user friendly and extremely secure.

Just a note, after you setup your system go to Do a full security scan. This is a very thorough testing of your protection, short of hiring a hacker. But just remember locks are only made to keep the non-ambitious from entering.

Doug
 
since it has been documented that the xp firewall allows the OS to communicate back to Microsoft in several ways (see for documented instances), i believe that relying solely on the xp firewall would be foolhardy and dangerous. jmho
 
IMHO, take ZoneAlarm over XP's firewall. ZoneAlarm is more configurable, and also covers outbound traffic, giving you considerably more protection against trojans.

To address what someone said earlier: Layered defenses work far better than single-point defenses. Using a broadband router/firewall in addition to running ZoneAlarm is what I do and what I recommend others do. Running antivirus on the mail server in addition to workstation-based antivirus is another example. However, running separate products at the same layer is probably going to break something - the above warning about not running XP firewall and ZoneAlarm on the same box being one, and another is not running multiple antivirus engines simultaneously (they tend to detect each other's signature files as being virus-infected).
-Steve
 
SteveTheGeek hits it on the head. Well said!

As a security professional, and long-type ZoneAlarm Pro user, I heartily recommend ZA! I also use a filter router on my home network, as well as ZA on each Windows PC.

As for Microsoft's XP firewall, I have 2 questions:

1) How secure has their software been in the past?
2) How much do you trust Microsoft?
3) Do you ready want to trust the fox to secure the
hen house?

I also highly endorse Steve Gibson's grc.com site for doing an external scan of you PC to see how secure you are. He's got a lot of great stuff.

 
Use Zone Alarm over XP firewall for one simple reason. XP firewall prevents incoming attacks, probably as securely as any Microsloth product. Zone Alarm prevents OUTGOING traffic that is the result of spyware, phone-homeware and worms. It is a suprior product, even Microsoft admits that.

I would advise against running 2 firewalls, especially 2 software based firewalls. I have run ZA along with my hardware based firewall on my switch without problems, but it is still not a recommended course of action, and I doubt that there are any real benefits, even though it sounds like it would be a good idea.

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
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