Norton Personal Firewall 2002 (5-pack)

Rating:
Summary: So far so good
Review: I bought this program when I had to return ZoneAlarm Pro2, which kept periodically completely locking down my system, possibly due to conflicts with Netboost or Norton Anti-Virus. I liked the interface better than the Norton firewall, and another thing I liked is that it would tell you the actual IP address of an incoming computer that was attempting to do anything, and would give you the actual filename of the program on your system for anything that was trying to get out. Norton doesn't do that, unfortunately.

However, I was forced to return ZoneAlarm because of the conflicts. Norton's product says it's is tested and integrated with their own Anti-Virus software, and so far I haven't had any of the problems I had with ZoneAlarm. I hope it stays that way, but I've only been using it for a couple of days. By that time, however, ZoneAlarm had rendered my system completely useless for accessing the net.

As I was a professional system administrator for 15 years, and have a lot of experience with Windows NT, I may try to troubleshoot somemore and see if I can figure out what went wrong with ZoneAlarm, since if I could get it to work okay, I'd stick with that.

However, for now Norton is working well and it's certainly a good product too. If you're a system administrator like I was, the fact that it's supposed to integrate smoothly with Norton's Anti-Virus software is a major selling point in its favor, since system stability is of overriding imporance in a server environment.

Rating:
Summary: A detailed personal firewall
Review: I just had a few miscellaneous comments to make.

Norton Personal Firewall is one of the three main packages out there offering this capability, along with Fail-Safe Technologies ZoneAlarm Pro 2, and McAfee's own McAfee Firewall software. These products work by monitoring all TCP/IP and IP Port activity on your system, and by acting (hopefully intelligently) on such activity when it occurs to keep the bad guys out of your system.

I run this under Windows XP, and so far it's worked quite smoothly. The program is more complex and is more difficult to configure if you want to customize the settings than ZoneAlarm Pro 2, but that's to be expected given all the extra options. Since I use this for a home PC, I may not need all the extra filtering and customizing capabilties that this offers, but it's okay. You have it if you want it.

I switched over to this program when I had some conflicts with ZoneAlarm Pro 2, although I like the simpler, more intuitive interface of it better than Norton. The conflicts may have been with Netsonic's Netboost caching program, rather than with Norton Anti-Virus, and I still need to do a better job of troubleshooting to nail that down. If I can resolve the conflicts, I might switch back to ZoneAlarm Pro 2, for one reason.

I can't seem to figure out how to configure Norton so that it pops up an alert whenever a program trys to access the net, so that at that point you can decide whether or not you want to permit it. You can set up logging so that it monitors everything, and you can even set up customized rules that are fairly detailed, but not this. I figure there has to be a way, but what with the extra complexity of the program I just haven't seen it yet, but I've looked at all the screens.

One thing Norton does implement better than ZoneAlarm Pro 2 is what it calls "Intrusion Detection." This pops up an alert when port-scanning is detected. ZoneAlarm Pro 2 does this simply by alerting you to every inbound attempt to communicate with your system, so it's really no different, but if it works right, you'll be informed of actual port scans whereas ZoneAlarm Pro 2 may not tell you that's what happening, it'll just say there was an unauthorized attempt to communicate with your system.

Obviously, there is a trade-off here between a program's ease of use and how much the developer wants to communicate to the user (who may not be that technically literate) all the details of what the firewall is seeing that's going on "under the hood." Since I was a professional NT system administrator for many years, I'd like to know about it just for general curiosity's sake, although it's probably not that important for most people.

I can't comment on Norton's product versus McAfee's, since I haven't used it myself, but I'd be interested in knowing how it compares with the McAfee offering.

Anyway, so far Norton's Personal Firewall has worked quite well and I'm very satisfied with it. I'll be extremely satisfied with it if I can just figure out how to do that one thing I mentioned.

Rating:
Summary: Awful!
Review: I would just like to comment very briefly on this product, that all seemed to be doing well and it did manage to work very well for a number of weeks. However it completly prevented me from viewing any websites under a 'secure server' Its caused me many wasted days with little access to the net. Money down the drain for this product, avoid!

Rating:
Summary: norton personal firewall 2001 was a lot better.
Review: If you're just a plain home user who do not want to bother customizing your personal firewall's policy, this is the firewall for you.

On the other hand, if you would rather have a mix of a smart firewall that also gives you the flexibility of fine tuning rules to your needs.... open certain ports (tcp or udp), let certain applications access the internet,... this software can be a bit confusing.

Though the 2002 version lets you do it, it takes a lot more extra steps for one to customize the packet filtering which is a total pain. The 2001 version is a lot more flexible and geared towards the more "savvy" user.

This is one of the few products that pretty much isn't worth an upgrade if you have an earlier version.

On the plus side, functionality is great, it provides good protection and a simple interface.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Spotty Product
Review: Norton Personal Firewall 2002 is neither the easiest-to-use product of its type, nor does it offer the best protection.

I found the program to be very tempermental: it worked very well when I first installed it, but it stopped working altogether shortly thereafter. Even after I got it working again, it failed to protect against TCP probes (a very common hacker attack).

I am not a internet security expert, although I am generally very comfortable with complex software, and I simply could not get this program to work reliably.

Do yourself a favor and try ZoneAlarm Pro instead: I found it to offer much better security, more reliable operation, and to be much easier to control.

Rating:
Summary: Useless
Review: Sure, it blocks ports... all of them! After fussing for a day to get Remote Desktop to work (and unblocking port 3389 numerous times) I finally decided I needed help. To my surprise Symantec offers NO free tech support. I surfed the "online support" (term used loosely) and found nothing referring to Remote Desktop... Finally I needed to get back to work and decided to pay the $29.95 for phone support only to get a message stating that they were too busy, please check the website for solutions.

Sure wish I could return this. It's money wasted.

Rating:
Summary: Get Norton Firewall or Internet Security 2003
Review: This is a good product, but the 2003 line is better. Both of
these software packages contain an OUTSTANDING ad blocking
feature. After installation, I visited numerous sites which had
previously dumped loads of pop-up and pop-under ad windows and
flash-based ads on my screen, but now -- POOF -- no more trash,
with no discernable negative effects on web page loading. Plus
ad banners are effectively eliminated--so all you get is the web
page you want. After a week of intensive use, I have yet to find
a problem with this software. I find it difficult to praise
this product enough--it delivers every feature smoothly and
efficiently, as advertised. I have it installed on my computer
along with Norton Cleansweep--no conflicts or flaws noted.