SYGATE AND ZONEALARM PERSONAL FIREWALLS

Sygate and ZoneAlarm Personal Firewalls

Sygate and ZoneAlarm Personal Firewalls

Introduction

The Internet is being used more and more everyday, and everyone knows that they are completely safe while using it. This is a common mistake made by many Internet users. Not only are more and more people using the Internet, but more and more people are being attacked on it too. Firewalls are now a necessary form of protection. Sygate Personal Firewall and ZoneAlarm are both good firewalls, however their protection varies in the way they protect ports, incoming attacks, and outgoing attacks. (John 2006:15-20)

Firewalls often have such functionality to hide the true address of protected hosts. Originally, the NAT function was developed to address the limited number of IPv4 routable addresses that could be used or assigned to companies or individuals as well as reduce both the amount and therefore cost of obtaining enough public addresses for every computer in an organization. Hiding the addresses of protected devices has become an increasingly important defense against network reconnaissance.

Discussion

Ports are often attacked or intruded upon. They are the place where attacks originate, which makes them a priority to protect. Sygate Personal Firewall has a user-friendly port monitoring system. ZoneAlarm blocks important ports, and monitors activity on the rest. Sygate can only report an attack on a port, and has no way of stopping the attack, however, ZoneAlarm will report and block the attack. If opted, ZoneAlarm also has the unique feature to trace the attack, and will retrieve information on the attacker such as phone numbers and addresses. Ports are important because of how often they are attacked, however the actual damage that can be done through a port is minor compared to the damage that can be done through an incoming attack. (Theresa 2006:20-59)

Incoming attacks are often the most devastating form of attack. Ping floods, which will reduce Internet speed to a crawl and at times crash a computer, are a common form of incoming attack. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks will also render the local computer useless. Sygate is no help in defending against incoming attacks. They will not show up in the system log, and will not be blocked in anyway. ZoneAlarm excels in the area of incoming attacks. It will keep a good system log of every attack, and it will sufficiently block nearly all known form of incoming attacks. Its trace system is still applicable when dealing with incoming attacks, allowing the attackers name and address to be found.

ZoneAlarm Security Suite is software that protects against hackers, viruses, worms, identity theft, security. ZoneAlarm's free firewall is the most popular. Like any free version of software it will not have all the features as paid or "professional" versions. Whereas Sygate provides the same kind of protection as zone alarm, it is just not as popular. (Steven 2009:33-74)

ZoneAlarm is a software firewall originally developed by Zone Labs, which was acquired in March 2004 by Check Point. It includes an inbound intrusion detection system, as well as the ...