Labs

Is it really possible to protect your PC for free? ZoneAlarm proves that, with a few provisos, it is. Zone Labs was the first company to produce a simple application control system, which other firewall developers have since adopted. The free ZoneAlarm includes this, as well as a few other features, filling in for the limitations of the Windows XP firewall.

The free ZoneAlarm is quite limited, though, and doesn't provide firewall rules as such. You can block all incoming traffic and allow incoming requests

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to certain programs, but you can't tailor the rules. As a result, it's all or nothing for IIS - you either expose its FTP and SMTP services as well as the web server, or you lock it away from the internet completely. For a more powerful system you need to upgrade to the commercial version.

We don't usually recommend using two firewalls on one system, but you can use ZoneAlarm and the Windows firewall together, using the latter to block incoming mail and file transfer requests. The risks are not the same as those of running two anti-virus programs together, and the most likely problem you'll encounter is accidentally blocking traffic that you want to allow.

If you just want to boost the security of Windows' existing firewall, ZoneAlarm is great. It won't check for web attacks, and it's not as configurable as the other firewalls on test here, but there's nothing wrong with the features it provides and it's ideal for regular internet users.

Shopper readers don't even need to go to the effort of downloading it, because the free version of ZoneAlarm is on this month's cover disc.