We have already discussed a few of the free virus protection programs that also include firewall. Virus protection is only a part of overall protection of your computer that you should take care of. We’ll deal with spyware and other mallware related stuff in some of the next posts but today let’s take a look at the firewalls.

Firewalls go way back (in terms of the internet of course, where even five years is considered way back ), the first whitepaper on firewalls was published in 1988.

A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting authorized communications. It is a device or set of devices which is configured to permit or deny computer applications based upon a set of rules and other criteria.

Source: Wikipedia

What a firewall does is it protects your computer from incoming traffic. For example, there are many ports on your computer if you are connected to the internet and if someone (or some script) wants to come into your computer it has to go through one of these ports. Once inside it can wreak havoc on your machine, if this is its purpose, and you could be in great trouble. The role of a firewall is to protect the “doors” (ports) from traffic that is potentially dangerous for you. And the traffic that does come through and is potentially dangerous will be taken care of by your virus protection program.

There are some virus protection programs that come in a bundle together with a firewall. One of them we have already discussed is Comodo Internet Security. The bundle offers solid firewall and virus protection.

Also, Microsoft Windows come with a built-in firewall, which in most cases takes care of the needs of a home user and can also be taken as some sort of a bundle with Microsoft Security Essentials, which we have also reviewed.

There are a number of free and paid firewall and virus protection programs and bundles in the market beside the ones mentioned here and since there are a number of people asking questions about the firewall protection as well, we’ll try to write some more posts related to the firewall protection in the future.