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Free firewalls outclass paid-for ones, test reveals
Published December 7th, 2006 in All Categories, Security
Free firewalls are better than their paid-for cousins. That is the surprising conclusion of a test of 
desktop firewalls by security researchers.
Researchers at David Matousec’s matousec.com carried out tests on 21 leading products using 26 assessment programs known as "leak" testers. These simulated a total of 77 test attacks on firewalls, configured using both out-of-the-box and optimal security settings. Each firewall was then awarded points based on its ability to pass each leak test in both modes.
The only two products to achieve a rating of "excellent" turned out to be free-to-use software, the Comodo Personal Firewall v2.3, and the Jetico Personal Firewall v2.0 beta. They scored, respectively, 9,350 and 9,125 points out of a possible total of 9,625, leaving the nearest rivals some way behind.
Surprisingly, paying for a product did not seem to make any difference to its ability to stop attacks — the rest of the results spread the two categories fairly evenly about the scoring. Some paid-for products turned in awful scores. ARNnet | Free firewalls outclass paid-for ones, test reveals
