Outpost Firewall... newbie-friendly?

Simulate030 · Post by **Simulate030** » Fri May 14, 2004 5:46 pm

Since many seem to love this FW, I decided to try it out yesterday. First thoughts, it was visually nice and very simple/limited (good or bad thing?). Also, it was using the same 10mb of RAM as ZAP does... made me wonder why people say I should get rid of ZAP because it's a resource hog when these 2 seem equal.

But the actual reason why I got rid of it is because it was too difficult for me to use. I'm unlike some of you in that I don't know much about ports and protocols, and quite frankly, I don't have all the time in the world to set these things up and figure out how to set up DNS/DHCP/etc in the firewall. I know there are presets, but they don't really cover everything. And for every program, you have to set up far too many things compared to in ZAP just allowing or blocking access & server. With ZAP, all tests have always shown that my ports are in stealth, so it's definitely doing something right. But Outpost wasn't very newbie-friendly, in my opinion. I didn't want to make something too secure or not secure enough by accident, anyways.

So I ended up a bit frustrated and uninstalled it... I would use it but I'm really a bit clueless when it comes to setting up rules. Would definitely appreciate it if someone could help or give some tips because I'd like to give it another try if possible. I've tried Sygate as recommended in the past, but it wasn't customizable enough to me, and also it seems like they don't update it or keep it in shape anymore... is this true?

-edit installed Sygate, and it actually uses 14mb. So ZAP is the least of the resource hogs?

About Sygate, my port 1025 is open on a security test.... what can I do to fix this? Or is it okay?

hayc59 · Post by **hayc59** » Fri May 14, 2004 10:54 pm

Simulate030, Hello
Outpost is a little complicated but once you have all the info
you need things should go fine for you.
Here is a few things you can read up on and visit our forum for more
help if needed, very friendly folks and very helpfull
Web-Hiker's Guide to Outpost Firewall--->
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/guide/
Outpost Forum--->
A Guide to Producing a Secure Configuration Using Outpost Firewall
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/sh ... php?t=9858
Please stop by and take a look you wont be dis-appointed

dreadlocke · Post by **dreadlocke** » Mon May 17, 2004 1:55 am

ZoneAlarm has been referred to as a resource hog not because of it's idle footprint, but rather when traffic heats up I have seen my vsmon.exe spike up to over 75,000 K. And it stays there for a long time.

You think Outpost is complex, try Tiny's 5.5 personal firewall.

Sygate has an issue with scans seeing it's native upper management port, thus alerting an attacker that you are running Sygate. Kerio suffers from this as well (and others I 'm sure). This is NOT why port 1025 is showing open on your scan incidentally, I'm just alerting you to a known "potential threat" of Sygate.

Regards,
DreadLocke