Kerio Personal Firewall

Kerio Personal Firewall (free for home use) is a well respected firewall, with many features you would expect to find on more expensive products.

Installing

The installer needs to reboot your PC during the installation, and from then on kerio is protecting your PC. It works well in both dialup and network environments, and allows you to easily specify which computers you trust (your local network for example), leaving everything not specifically trusted in the untrusted internet zone.

The configuration window shows you want applications are running that may want to access the internet, and lets you decide whether to let them or not.

Kerio personal firewall allows you to fine tune your firewall settings, if you feel like delving deeping. Most users probably won't need to, but anyone familiar with enterprise versions of Kerio's firewalls will feel right at home with this personal firewall

Surfing

It has a set of predefined defaults allowing operations such as ping and dns, but the first time you try to surf the internet, it will prompt you for permission. If you tick the create a rule for this connection check box, then it won't ask you again.

You will be prompted the first time you use an application to access the internet, such as the first time you check your email, or send an instant-message. This prevents spyware and viruses from accessing the internet without your permission, preventing them from doing too much damage.

Pros and Cons

Kerio personal firewall has many features that the average user will never need, but provides solid protection with just the default settings. This can result in the application being a little confusing for first time users, but as with all their products Kerio provides great documentation, explaining how everything works.

A minor niggle is the lack of an uninstall option on the program menu, as if you are trying out the firewall, being able to uninstall it without visiting the control panel is much easier for new users, though I don't think that new users are the target audience for this personal firewall.

Overall Kerio Personal Firewall gets a 8/10 rating

Windows Guide