Hi everybody, today we are going to discuss the difference between a hardware and software firewall.. All of us are quite versed that we need an anti virus program to protect our computers but did you know that you also need a firewall to protect yourself from hackers? A firewall has a totally different purpose then you’re anti virus program. You’re anti virus program helps protect your system from bad programs installing them selves on your system and your firewall helps protect you from hackers taking over your computer. They both have totally different purposes.
There are two different types of firewalls, one type is software based and the other is hardware based. The software type includes products like Zone Alarm, Norton, AVG and Total Defense. All these products work well at protecting your computer but if one of the products is too aggressive or if it accidentally blocks a valid program, you might have problems trying to perform certain functions with the blocked program. We see this quite frequently with software based firewall products. If this happens, you will have to go into the programs settings and allow the program that was blocked or in some cases if all else fails, the firewall will have to be uninstalled completely from the computer. We have also seen many instances where a firewall program completely blocked people from getting on the Internet. We have seen this happen quite often especially with products like Norton and McCaffee.
If you have a router or a modem, in all likelihood you might already have a firewall and don’t even know it. Most modern routers and modems have built in hardware firewalls built right in. If this is the case then there is no need to use a second software firewall. A hardware type has several advantages that we are going to discuss next. First, this type of protection uses no resources on your computer. A regular software firewall can use a ton of resources on your system that can slow you down considerably. In addition, using your router for your security will work on protecting every device on your network. This is a much better solution then having to install a slow running program on every computer. The firewall in your router is totally customizable and you can open and close ports for any computer on your network. You can even block certain websites by adding them to your blacklist. This is the best way to go if you want the best protection without compromising the speed of your computer.
If you currently have a product running on your computer to help protect your system and your computer is running slow, replace it with virus protection only type software and let your router do the work instead of your computer.
Author: Joe Zelenak, Staff Writer
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