Forum Discussion
My Wish: A full fledged firewall for Windows 10
Hello, Jack.
Erm... I am sorry, but what you are dreaming is far inferior to what we already have.
You are dreaming about an allow-by-default firewall. Windows already comes with a deny-by-default firewall... well, at least, as far the incoming traffic is concerned. (Outgoing traffic is still treated as allow-by-default.) In other words, not just Russia and Pakistan but everywhere is blocked by default. You get to tell the firewall about those places from which incoming traffic is allowed. The most simple routers already have this.
In addition, there was a time when Microsoft did indeed create a full-fleged firewall for entire networks. It is called Forefront Threat Management Gateway, formerly ISA Server. But it has been discontinued, since 2012.
Edit: Removed "blacklist-based" and "whitelist-based". While not inherently confusing, they do confuse me.
Well, thank you, my wish had been granted, before I even made it! I was not aware of that firewall. Subsequent reading has told me that it has been around for awhile and is highly regarded. I am now poking into all of its' corners.
Thanks for the feedback.
- Glad to be of help.
But of course, as I did mention in my original reply, Windows Firewall has a shortcoming that makes it unsuitable for becoming a good personal firewall: Outgoing traffic is still treated as allow-by-default. Any app that runs can contact any server on the Internet. Most commercial personal firewall products offer interactive outgoing traffic filtering. This prevents Trojan horses and ransomware from contacting their masters.
