The 2010 Personal Firewall Robustness Evaluation

With the advent of cheaper Internet connections, the number of Internet connections among home users is on the rise. Generally, home users have little understanding of the security concerns associated with Internet connectivity. To protect against computer attacks, generally a home user may install a personal firewall on his/her computer. To determine the effectiveness of personal firewalls, evaluation tests were performed against the ten firewall products available to users at local electronic stores and listed on popular firewall security websites. The firewalls were tested in their default and maximum security mode. The investigation was carried out by performing a port scan and vulnerability scan attacks against a computer with no firewall protection and computers running personal firewalls. The results of the investigation established that the computers running the firewalls exhibited some or all of the vulnerabilities detected on a computer with no firewall protection