Best Firewall – The Top Free and Paid Firewall Software

I have reviewed various antivirus software on this blog on several occasions. You can find the most recent antivirus shootout over here. While these articles should help you to get your primary defense against malwares in shape, dealing with virus is just one aspect of computer security. Firewall’s are crucial sofware that prevent intrusion and can make sure that trojan horses and backdoor programs don’t have an open field to create havoc even after they get in.

MatoUsec.com regularly tests all the popular Firewall’s and their reccomendations should help you to get an idea about the effectiveness of a Firewall. Here are the best Firewall’s according to the latest test results :

Online Armor Personal Firewall - 99%
Comodo Internet Security Free - 96%
Outpost Firewall Free - 93%
Outpost Security Suite Pro 2009 - 92%
Online Armor Personal Firewall Free - 92%
Jetico Personal Firewall - 89%
Malware Defender – 89%
Privatefirewall - 88%
PC Tools Firewall Plus Free - 86%
Netchina S3 2008 Free - 85%
Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 - 83%

The results aren’t really very surprising. However, Zone Alarm Pro’s fall from grace is worth noting. The once market leader and standard-setter is now struggling to put up even an average performance. Also worth noticing is the poor performance by Firewall’s built into antivirus products (internet security suites). Kaspersky is the only one which had a decent Firewall. Others like Norton, Bitdefender, Avira, McAfee, Trend Micro, Bitdefender, GData, F-Secure, Panda and Rising performed miserably in the lesak tests. This again goes to show why as a suite Kaspersky is probably the most powerful option available to users. You can find more information on Kaspersk’y latest release Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 here.

If you wish you can even download the leak tests that were used during testing from here and run the tests yourselves. Another website worth checking out is TestMyPCSecurity.com. This website also provides a number of leak tests that the users can download and run by themselves. Each test is packaged in a zip file and are simple to carry out. The results of leak tests performed by users can be found here.

Judging from the results the best free firewall would be Comodo Internet Security, Outpost Firewall and Online Armour. All of them offer excellent protection and have a simple interface. If you are a power user then Jetico firewall is also worth tinkering with. Its an excellent lightweight solution that can be configured to provide excellent protection, provided you know what you are doing. And in case you are looking for the best combination of antivirus and firewall Kaspersky is the one to go for.