Vista firewall from Windows comes as standard with the vista operating system and yet the built in vista firewall is usually replaced with another firewall due to security concerns. Some people like to use Vista firewall due to its obvious compatibility with the operating system and that it uses fewer resources than other firewall software.
However, Vista firewall appears to have have one main problem, it has no outgoing protection. In other words, if there is malicious software on your system, it will be able to bypass Vista’s firewall and connect to the internet. The argument against this problem is that if you have malicious software then it will probably bypass your firewall regardless of outbound protection, which suggests that once on your system the virus will be able to connect outwardly. This is not necessarily so and it is important that any firewall has outbound protection to stop unwanted computer programs from accessing the internet.
Actually, Vista firewall does have outbound protection, you just have to find it and switch it on! Once on, you will have outbound protection; the issue with Vista’s firewall, though, is that it will block everything and so you need to add specific rules to allow wanted software to access the internet. This can be time consuming and often wanted programs have less obvious components that need to access the internet and if these are not give the OK then the entire program will not connect to the internet. Yet, with a few tweaks Vista firewall can run the way you want it to.
Vista Firewall advanced settings
To access Vista firewall advanced settings, you need to find the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). This can be found using ‘start’ and typing ‘MMC’ into the search bar. Once the MMC is open, go to ‘File’ and then ‘Add/Remove snap-in’. If you scroll down, you will see ‘Windows Firewall with advanced security’. Click on ‘add’, make sure that ‘Local Computer’ is highlighted and then finish.
You should now have Vista Firewall in the center of the MMC and by clicking here, you can access the various firewall settings. The various profiles will show that inbound protection is on and the outbound firewall protection is off. This is where you switch in Vista firewall’s outbound protection.
The ‘Outbound Rules’ will enable you to add a new rule on the right hand side of the MMC. This is where you need to add the path to the program that you wish to allow through the firewall. For example, you will not be able to use your browser to access the internet unless you add this as a new rule. Let us say you use Google Chrome, you need to find the path to chrome.exe and add the whole path to the MMC to allow Chrome access to the internet. As a side note, for those who cannot find chrome.exe, it is in users, name of user, application data, local and in the Google folder.
You can of course add allowed programs through the firewall by going to the security section of the control panel and clicking ‘Allow a program through Windows firewall’. However, this does not always work and the direct path added to the MMC seems to be more effective, though more cumbersome!
Vista Firewall does have outbound protection, but you need to switch it on and then manually add all your allowed programs access to the internet; this is why many users add other firewall programs, simply because external firewall programs alert you when something wants to access the internet and you can then decide to allow or block. If only vista firewall was that user friendly.
If you do go for another firewall, make sure the Vista firewall is off; two firewalls running at the same time will cause conflict.
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