JoeD

Every major company that I worked for as a network professional checked for outbound traffic. These companies, but also millions of users, want to know whether their OS or applications are hiding that they're actually connecting with the outside world. Virus scanners or anti-spyware don't stop an OS for example from making outbound connections.

Everybody who wants to be well protected and who is concerned about privacy needs application level protection. Having a software firewall is also an extra level of defense and in almost all cases they also offer different protection techniques that a simple home hardware router doesn't offer. It's also an extra defense against trojans and worms that are not recognised by anti-virus software or treats that are coming from other clients on a local home network.

I sincerely advice people who have one of these inexpensive routers to continue to make use of a software firewall, that is, if you do care about security and privacy. A better solution is however an application level gateway like most businesses prefer, but that's in most cases too expensive or complicated for ordinary users.

But hey, it's all about how precious your data is that you store on your server or computer.


Always remember people, because many have made this mistake so many times;

a) the Windows XP firewall does not protect against outbound threats!
b) most hardware router firewalls do not protect against outbound threats!

For those who want to know more, try these sites;

http://www.firewallguide.com/overview.htm
http://www.uksecurityonline.com/

Rick

Joe I thank you for all the info - I don't understand the term 'Outbound threats' could you explain?

JoeD

You're welcome Rick.

Outbound threats are threats that originate on your local system. These include malware installed by downloaded software, outbound packets containing personal information from installed software, keyloggers, etc

Btw Rick, if you're looking for a web server; I've tried this one in the past:

http://www.keyfocus.net/kfws/

It's free, has lots of options and I found it stable and secure.
You can set it up as a service and you won't even notice it's running.

Rick

Thanks Joe.
At present I am using an integrated program called Appserver and is working well for me, I will check your link and have a look 8))

JoeD

Now a question for you Rick; what is Appserver? Do you have some more info. I tried to look for it on the internet, but "Appserver" leads me to all kind of pages that don't seem to be related.

Thanks.

Rick

AppServ is the Apache/PHP/MySQL open source software installer packages.

Objective : - Easy to buid Webserver and Database Server
- For those who just beginning client/server programming.
- For web programmers/developers using PHP & MySQL.
- For programming techniques that is easily to be ported to other platforms such as WindowZ
- Single step installation , no need to perform multiple step, time consuming installation and configuration.
- Ready-to-run just after you've finished installing.ready-to-run just after you've finished installing.
- If you hate and boring M$ IIS Webserver


http://www.appservnetwork.com/

8))

JoeD

Thanks Rick, that sounds interesting. I will have a look at it, thanks a lot! [righton]