Firewalls alarmed

It gives a person a sense of security and satisfaction to hear one’s computer has a pre-installed firewall. But pre-installed firewalls ? Are they really helpful and secure? Will they be able to ward off the deadliest attacks on the computer? May be not or not at all. The MS Windows firewall is one of the easiest firewalls to break into. But lets not get into the debate of how bad the firewall is . A lot of players have long been supporting windows OS,most notable of them being Norton , Mcafee, Trend micro and of late Zone Alarm had become quite famous because of its award winning triple layered firewall . With the launch of Microsoft’s latest OS ,Vista , there was a mad scramble to launch support for the OS as its architecture turned out to be a little different from the existing XP. All the Internet users who had shifted to the resource hogging Vista for its stunning looks had to look for alternatives for firewalls and internet security systems because of lack of support from their favourite ones.

If looked and researched closely , Zone Alarm which had rose to fame in no time had built up its die-hard fan base, who in no circumstances would use another firewall or internet security system. They were left nowhere as Zonelabs, the parent company who had not anticipated such a mad rush for a switchover to vista by normal everyday users, failed to give their fans a vista compatible firewall. After must beta testing over 3 months ,finally, the D-day arrived on June 15th,2007 . The Vista compatible Zone Alarm Security System was launched finally . But will the new firewall be as competent as the older one?

The latest release ZIS v7.0 for XP have already won a number of awards with loads of options, but its vista counterpart doesn’t seem to offer much . Though the main firewall and antivirus and antispyware programs are present,a number of options like the parental control , identity protection , IM security and privacy are missing. Parental controls and addons are left out in most of the new versions of other security systems but providers like Norton have a separate addon pack which can be downloaded free of cost from the site. This is not the case with Zone Alarm. Moreover Zone Alarm is providing only 15 days trial pack whereas others provide a 30 days trial. Norton , with a new look and lighter on system requirements has won a lot of hearts , provide a serious threat to Zone Alarm . Kaspersky which drives the antivirus engine of Zone Alarm has also won good reviews with its own security software.

With more security systems being launched for Vista with better services it will become increasingly difficult to choose the best. It is to be seen who needs to be more alarmed, the others , the users or Zone Alarm itself ?