Problem:
Your next tasks is to recommend a software firewall to install on a company’s workstations. Your supervisor wants you to consider both commercial and free products (e.g. free= ZoneAlarm). Research both kinds of software firewalls, choose one product from each category and then prepare a report (1-2 pages) that presents your choices and explains the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Solution:
Every company’s systems need to guarded against those who penetrate the company’s system in order to steal information. Therefore, use of firewalls have now become a necessity irrespective of the size and nature of company’s business. Firewalls are of many types and are manufactured by different manufacturers. Often it is tough for network administrators to choose the right one to make the best fit for the company’s requirements. There can be large differences between the commercial and freeware firewalls. The degree of security offered, use of installation, use and configuration can be the major factors. More than that, its needs to be seen if the company requires hardware firewall also along with software firewalls. Many new operating systems like Windows come with entry-level software firewalls as the users do not realize the security risks associated with being on Internet. But these firewalls are only able to monitor the incoming traffic on a machine and are able to do absolutely nothing for the outbound traffic. For example, a basic breed of firewall will not be able to stop the data transmissions happening on a machine’s hard drive. Thus the freely available firewalls carry a capacity to provide some basic protection only and should not be confused with the commercially available best breed of firewalls.
Coming to freely available software firewalls, ZoneAlarm is the most popular of all the firewall download programs. It provides basic security features towards both incoming and outgoing traffic on a company’s network and is well suited for new computers also. It offers high level of security when default setting are enabled and work transparently. Once the firewall is turned on a network, it is capable to protecting itself from malicious attacks trying to switch it off or even from inexperienced users in the company who might turn it off by mistake or by bad intent.
A major drawback of ZoneAlarm is that it offers limited security related to MailSafe features. It is not fully developed to protect against visual basic scripts attack that may occur if bad scripts are embedded in emails on the network and is not able to stop users from running malware attached with email messages. ZoneAlarm also fails in protecting against leak-test attacks and comes with no ID protection mechanism, which is highly needed in complex networks of today. There is no advanced program control and neither does the free version of the firewall contains the Smart Defense Advisor, that is otherwise available with the ZoneAlarm Pro version. Apart from that, the network that uses ZoneAlarm needs to take care of installing anti-virus system separately unless it pulls a commercial version of the program.
On the other hand, it is always recommended for a well-established company to go for a commercially available firewall as they offer much higher level of security as compared to the freeware. The company can choose McAfee Virus Scan Plus which is a cutting-edge firewall. McAfee is far more better choice than ZoneAlarm if the company provides Internet connectivity to its users 24X7. Apart from providing high level of security in all ways, it safeguards both the incoming and outgoing traffic. It also comes as an integration of antivirus, antirootkit and antispyware. McAfee also comes with a SiteAdvisor that is able to suggest the users that they may visiting malicious websites. QuickClean program can be used to optimize the computer’s performance. McAfee conducts risk assessment when the users send emails or download files from Internet and it shall not let the malicious advertisement pop on user’s screen. McAfee is much more user friendly as it keeps displaying information that is user friendly and it allows users to delete the not-needed application along with their cookies, memory, cache and browser history.