ConSeal - Personal Firewall Review

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Reviewed by: Paul Schmehl
http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/

ConSeal Signal9 Firewall (now McAfee Personal Firewall)

Brief Summary:

Signal9 is a good firewall, but it can be very difficult for the average user to configure. It requires a good to excellent understanding of TCP/IP and packet filtering to really be effective. In some situations it can be very frustrating to use (trying to do pings and traceroutes generates multiple warnings, configuring for "unusual" services, such as VPN, can be quite challenging). For the user who accesses the Internet for web, email and news, it works quite well.

Price:

$29.00 US

Pros:

"Learns" new rules by user interaction
Blocks many common denial of service attacks
Blocks all the common service ports by default
Cons:

Alerts may be confusing
Configuring "non-standard" services can be quite challenging
Doesn't have the ability to allow for "trusted networks"
Requires a good to excellent knowledge of TCP/IP to be truly effective and useful

Paul L. Schmehl
http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/
Supervisor, Support Services
The University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member