> There are only to reasons to pick ZoneAlarm over BlackIce.
>
> 1. Its free!
> 2. It is so easy to set it up a Monkey could do it.
These are terrible reasons to do anything!
I don't like any windows-based fw/id products because they all hack the
operating system, and still depend on the underlying OS to process frames,
at least to a point. If you have a 9x box, your 9x stack (basically crap)
is still processing frames - until it works its way up to the black-ice/zone
alarm/whatever driver. As far as I'm concerned, any host-based "magic
bullet" designed to somehow protect a 9x box is inherently flawed because it
depends on the security of the OS it's trying to protect.
NT 5 has a firewall API that allows products of this type to have better
hooks into the underlying OS. And, NT's stack is much more solid than 9x.
Seeing as how the firewall API is brand new, and black ice/zone alarm work
on other OSs besides NT 5, I seriously doubt they're being used. I could be
wrong though.
Use a separate hardware product, or a separate box based preferably on
OpenBSD. Put those old 486s to use and get a real solution while doing so.
Jeff Schmidt, MCSE, CISSP
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