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I have recently been persuaded that the firewall that comes with Windows Vista is not a big improvement from Windows XP built-in firewall. It can easily let in viruses, spyware, malware and other unwanted and dangerous executable programs too. Don’t get me wrong - it does protect against some stuff, it also restricts the permissions for some programs already on the pc that behave suspiciously - but this is as good as it gets.

This is why in all cases I urge people to consider an additional firewall or, if they want to go all the way, the complete Internet Security package that contains a firewall as well as an antivirus. There may be some other additional modules included in the solution like email scanner or Google search results scanner, but the two I’ve mentioned are the main ones.

A normal modern firewall not only monitors the Internet traffic but also monitors events occuring on the computer like new program installation or scheduled program run or automatic updates to the already installed programs. Every suspicious activity should be (and will be if specified) checked and the question or alert will pop-up stopping the program execution and informing a user about this suspicious activity.

An antivirus in my view is less important than a firewall because the threats these days mainly come from the Internet, not with an odd disk passed from person to person like in old days. A computer user might download something dodgy from some dodgy website by himself or herself and open it - this is where an antivirus would come handy but if all websites a user visits are legitimate and well-established then there’s almost no risk to get a virus.

There’s also a risk to get a virus through email but again if a user is careful with his or her emails and opens attachments only from the known senders, the risk to get a virus - again - is minimal.

So please get the third-party firewall if you don’t yet have it on your computer (Kerio or Outpost or Comodo or any of the good paid ones like Kaspersky or Norton or McAfee etc), install it and enjoy the safe browsing and safe work on the computer. Don’t forget to switch the Windows firewall off - you won’t need it any more.

Please also remember that having a third-party firewall on your computer doesn’t mean you have to stop updating Windows or indulge into careless Internet browsing downloading and running programs with unknown credentials hoping that the firewall will pick the “baddies” out and tell you. A firewall is only effective when a user is careful with what he or she does on the computer.