AV-Comparatives Firewall Test 03/2014

The Windows Firewall does the exact same job of blocking incoming connections as a third-party firewall. Third-party firewalls like the  may pop up more often, informing you that they’re working and asking for your input, but the Windows firewall is constantly doing its thankless job in the background.
It’s enabled by default and should still enabled unless you’ve disabled it manually or installed a third-party firewall. You can find its interface under Windows Firewall in the Control Panel.
When a program wants to receive incoming connections, it must create a firewall rule or pop up a dialog and prompt you for permission.
For most users, using a third-party firewall just introduces unnecessary complexity.
+
The SecureAnywhere firewall monitors data traffic traveling out of your computer ports. It looks for untrusted processes that try to connect to the Internet and steal your personal information. It works with the Windows firewall, which monitors data traffic coming into your computer. With both the SecureAnywhere and Windows firewall turned on, your data has complete inbound and outbound protection.
 
 

Users can't be trusted to answer every nuisance firewall prompt correctly, so Webroot's approach is defensible for the large majority of its customers.
 
Webroot does lack network traffic IDS signatures to block known network-based attacks, though. Windows 8 Defender does have them, which is why we always leave it on. It's a weakness of WSA, but not one most users should be overly concerned about nor one I immediately advocate that they remedy.
 
The entire firewall issue is complex and can be talked about at length. For the normal user it's not a huge concern point.
 
As a power user, I have various approaches depending on the PC I'm protecting. Windows Firewall, which Webroot leaves intact for you, is extremely powerful but sometimes annoying to configure when blocking outbound. The most paranoid of users should already be layering their protections, which would cover their complaints of WSA's lack of network IDS and active HTTP filtering via another product.

Thanks Daniel! :D
Windows Firewall achieved a very good result in this test. That's good news :D
IMO a combination of Windows Firewall and the WSA provides a sufficient level of protection and not from today does a great job ;)
 
Cheers,
 
Mike

@ wrote:
Thanks Daniel! :D
Windows Firewall achieved a very good result in this test. That's good news :D
IMO a combination of Windows Firewall and the WSA provides a sufficient level of protection and not from today does a great job ;)
 
Cheers,
 
Mike

Very true even though I use Look'n'Stop Firewall one time payment but it's not being supported and works great on Win 7 but it will not work on Win 8 or 8.1 so when I go to the next version of Windows hopefully Windows 9 then it will be Windows Firewall and WSA!
 
Cheers,
 
Daniel 😉

Thanks for the post Daniel...very interesting data with interesting results. Nice avatar!:D

You can see that GDATA and Comodo was in the test and asked to be removed because they did so badly. So Windows Firewall & WSA's Firewall is a great parring!
 
Link
 
TH  ;)

I know that this is something that you have been advocating for a long time...right as usual...;)
 
Regards
 
 
Baldrick