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Firewalls

A personal firewall is a piece of software that resides on an individual computer  primarily to protect that particular computer and that protection is designed to intercept and prevent penetration by intruders.

 At a minimum, home computers need to have personal firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware software installed and kept up-to-date.

The Vista and XP Service Pack 2 operating systems have personal firewalls built in that are turned on by default to block threats from the Internet. 

But they are not necessarily the best firewall programs around.There are proprietary firewall programs available. Some are free and more sophisticated versions are available for a fee.

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While most would agree that a primary role of a firewall is to simply deny unauthorized traffic from entering the system or network, personal firewalls also generally monitor how programs interact with the operating system and which programs attempt to initiate outbound network or Internet communications and either alert the user or block the traffic when suspicious activity occurs.  In order for these programs to be able to work, we have to create an allow rule and we set it to allow both in and out traffic.  You have the option to grant and deny access to Internet on a per-application basis, thus preventing worm, Trojan horse and spyware programs from hurting your computer.

A good firewall is the best way to keep personal data in and hackers out of your computer.

  

Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2008