Chapter 4. Personal Firewalls: Windows Firewall and Trend Micro s PC-cillin

Chapter 4. Personal Firewalls: Windows Firewall and Trend Micro's PC-cillin

Firewall technology has moved both upward into the large enterprise and service-provider space as well as all the way down to the desktop level. Desktop firewalls, also known as personal firewalls, are designed to protect a single system. These firewalls have been around for a long time in the Linux and BSD space but only relatively recently have they made a significant entrance into the Windows desktop. Many computer vendors now bundle a personal firewall with a trial license on every system they sell. In addition, Microsoft now offers a personal firewall, Windows Firewall, enabled by default with every version of Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2). (Prior to Windows XP SP2 it was known as Windows Internet Connection Firewall [ICF].)

This chapter provides an overview of two personal firewall packages for the Windows platform: Windows Firewall and Trend Micro's PC-cillin. The focus of this chapter is not a detailed discussion of these products from the perspective of how secure they are as a firewall product but rather on a general level how you can use them, as examples of the many personal firewall solutions, to improve the security of an endpoint system.