"It seems that even with something as logical as computer science, there is room for differences of opinion."
indeed there is, which points to the validity of this statement...
"Security is NOT a product, just a process." #reply-18294008
i see that rick already replied to your post and he addressed zonealarm's capability to stop outbound connections. routers don't do this. a good firewall will.
i addressed the outbound protection to some degree in this post #reply-18839268 .
your earlier statement was, "Someone once told me that if you have a router you don't need to have a firewall".
i say that that is wrong. for the reason rick and i gave, and for the "process rather than product" quote provided above. relying on any one product to keep you safe is not really such a good plan.
your friend went on to say, "most home users don't have enough 'useful' information to tempt someone from attacking your network", which needs to be addressed.
people often say, why would someone want to hack me? or, i don't keep sensitive data on my pc. and they are missing an awful big point. large scale attacks aimed at corporations or universities of even governments (known as denial of service attacks) are launched *not* from the attacker's machine, but from hundreds of "zombie" machines that have been compromised by the attacker and then used to go after the target.
many attackers couldn't care less what kind of information you have on your machine. they are not after your passwords or your trading accounts or your steamy email. they want control of your machine, they want to "own" your machine, and then use your machine via remote access to join with other similarly owned machines to flood the target machine with requests, thus rendering it useless.
your friend is correct in that the NAT router will act as a hardware firewall and thwart the vast majority of hacking attempts, but his comments implying that hackers just want useful information are very misleading.
a final reason for using a software firewall to complement a hardware firewall is if the network goes down, for whatever reason, you'll still be protected.
i run a LinksysBEFSR41 router, it is rock-solid and quite dependable, but if my broadband connection goes down, and i want to connect to the net, i turn to my back up service, which is dial up. and that takes the router right out of the equation! the router is for broadband, not dial up.
so if cox cable goes down, i shift gears, connect via my little modem on the prairie, and zonealarm starts blocking all kinds of inbound connection attempts that the router would otherwise have been shielding me against.
so, we've just looked at three reasons why a software firewall should be in place alongside the hardware (router) firewall...
1. multi-layered security process, not relying on a single product
2. outbound connections blocked
3. protection in case of broadband outage |
