Norton Internet Security 2004 Norton Internet Security's Powerful Firewall Forrest Stroud
Norton Internet Security's Powerful Firewall
The Firewall is at the heart of Norton Internet Security. By monitoring and controlling all connections between your computer and the Internet, the NIS firewall protects you from any and all unauthorized intrusions — both those you can see and those you can't.
NIS presents three default levels of security for you to choose from, or you can create your own custom level of control. The highest level of security will automatically block all access to the Internet unless specifically authorized by the user and will also frequently alert the user whenever a suspected attack originates from the Internet.
The medium level of security is recommended for most users and is configured to block known threats without continually posting alerts whenever an intrusion occurs. A final default level of secure offers minimal protection by automatically blocking only the most common types of attacks. We started out our evaluation of NIS on the most advanced level of security but quickly scaled back to the medium level of security after being deluged with alert messages for nearly every outbound and inbound exchange of data.
In addition to its default and custom levels of security, the NIS firewall also offers a Rules Assistant Wizard for "training" the firewall, advanced configuration settings, and detailed statistics for incoming and outgoing data. The Rules Assistant Wizard will step you through the process of defining individual rules for any type of communication that isn't currently covered by the firewall security rules.
As with BlackICE Defender, NIS's tray icon changes whenever a security alert arises. You can then get additional information on the alert by clicking on the icon. By tapping into the firewall's Advanced Options tab you can view which events will trigger a security alert and which will pass through without any trouble. By default, NIS blocks a number of Trojan horses, denial of service worms, and similar backdoor entry programs, including common threats like NetBus, Back Orifice 2000, Trin00 DDoS, SubSeven, and DeepThroat.
