Top 3 Free Firewalls

In recent weeks we have had the pleasure of compiling some of the best freeware, for securing our PCs in the form of free AVs and spyware removers. While these are preventive measures that most users deploy only after their PCs have been infected, this week we have decided to take the opposite road and tackle the problem at its source. Most infections and vulnerability exploitations from "drive-by Trojans" and spyware can easily be prevented by using a good firewall. Now this leads to the question... What exactly makes for a good firewall?

While the definition of this may vary, here are some undeniable facts for what makes for a good security product for home use.

1. Stateful Inspection - It should be a "Stateful inspection" firewall. The term is applied to any firewall, that is capable of analyzing an incoming data packet and by means of a careful system of rules, will be able to detect any suspicious activity and prevent system exploitation.

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2. Content/Vulnerability filtering - The ways of hacking a PC today has certainly grown from the days when people would use simple port scanners to try and find an open port and then hack our machines. Most hacks today take place by means of sophisticated bots that try and detect browser related bugs, in JavaScript ActiveX and other web related technologies. Content filtering works here by blocking these malicious web-based attacks.

3. An easy way of defining packet management rules, for separate applications.

Keeping all these factors in mind, we went looking for products that offered all these points and did it for free. Here is our list.

__PAGEBREAK__Comodo Free Firewall