Outpost Firewall Pro 2.5 - part I

by Andrew Cooper

The state of affairs

Hello, it's been a while since I last wrote to the site. I apologize and promise to write more often!

There's recently been quite a shift in the way cyber criminals are attacking people and organizations. With the current rise of spam and phishing incidents, increased hacker sophistication, and user unawareness resulting in lax protection policies, there's no surprise that criminals have gradually taken over connected PCs. If you think this is an overstatement, read on! Another change is the motive of attackers-the look-what-I-can-do loner has morphed into money-motivated gangs stealing through extortion, data commandeering, identity theft and service restriction.

Not surprisingly, folks who prefer to stay current with security news and the latest protection tools, have asked us to come up with materials to quickly familiarize people with the latest trends and changes in some of the more popular software products.

To respond with something new and interesting was quite easy considering the multitude of useful applications catering to the needs of personal computer security. The problem was narrowing it all down for you, so you got only the best of the best.

This haunted me for some time until I started receiving a lot of feedback from people using the trial version of Agnitum Firewall Pro 2.5, which surprisingly was practically 100% positive. I kept reading comments that the program can protect against all known Internet attacks, that it is easy to use and light on system resources. I began to wonder if we'd finally found the Holy Grail of security software-a package that could provide protection against all leak tests.

My last encounter with Agnitum was my review of its version 2.1 and I was curious to see what changes were made since I'd last used the program.

Before downloading the trial version of Agnitum Outpost, I read their promotional materials that promised full-scale outbound data protection, enhanced usability and SP2 compatibility. I was eager to see if the program lived up to its PR.

So, let's roll.

Initial settings and first-time execution

The installation was smooth and robust, no change from the previous version, but the next step, which involves the configuring of the program, is markedly improved with an Automatic Configuration option that takes care of everything associated with the program's setup and first run. Very nice.



A big plus, considering that for a novice, inexperienced user it would be a definite undertaking to correctly configure the application rules and network access preferences. This approach to program setup is very beneficial to rookies who otherwise would feel daunted.

As soon as the system rebooted, the new Security Center module built into Windows XP SP2 started recognizing the firewall and reporting its activity of protecting the computer from latest Internet threats. This is an important point; the users should be assured that their computer is being protected.

Continue to Part II