Symantec Norton Personal Firewall 2002

Ashley McKinnon. — 2002-04-19T10:45:54.000Z

Ashley McKinnon., PC Magazine, Friday 19 April 2002 at 10:45:54

Does the job asked of it.

With the latest version of Norton Personal Firewall, Symantec has included many new features and enhancements. With support for Windows XP, Norton Personal Firewall 2002 adds more configurable control over your internet connection and guards against hacker threats.

The software's interface is very intuitive and complete control over all aspects of the firewall is within easy reach. There are three default levels of access control: High, Medium and Low. These are selected with a simple slider bar.

For more experienced users, a customised level can be selected. From here, you can set the level of security for Java and ActiveX components. The overall look of the interface is comparable to Windows Explorer, with a navigation pane on the left and the information window on the right.

A handy feature Symantec has included in Norton Personal Firewall 2002 is the external Security Risk Scan option. This will connect you to Symantec's website, which then runs a scan on your system. It checks against the most common hacker-based threats and gives a report on any findings.

With LiveUpdate, the firewall will be kept up to date and the latest threat data can then be downloaded from Symantec's website. One year of updates is included in the purchase price. A year's subscription is then $9.95.

The software monitors applications that attempt to communicate with your system. Any outbound traffic is intercepted and the firewall will invoke a pop-up to ask what action you'd like to take. Options include 'allow communication for the session', 'always allow communication' or 'deny communication'.

From within the privacy control features, you can determine the level of information that's allowed in and out of your system. This includes cookie control and confidential data. As with the general firewall settings, you can select High, Medium or Low or a customised level.

Caution should be taken, however, if you're going to use this software in a networked environment. Under default settings, you won't be able to access any mapped network drives. Little is mentioned in the documentation about this.

Also, the firewall sometimes auto-configures itself to handle application communication and you're never really sure exactly what it's doing.

As a firewall, Norton Personal Firewall 2002 does the job asked of it. As an overall package, it's a worthy purchase.

Contact

Symantec: St Cloud Gate, St Cloud Way, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 8XD

Tel 020 7616 5600

www.symantec.co.uk

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Symantec Norton Personal Firewall 2002