Ok, after reading positive reviews of MSE I thought I'd use it with my new installation of Windows 7, so far its running great but I just wanted to know if the firewall that comes with Windows 7 is secure enough to use alongside MSE, I did have Outpost Free Firewall 2009 but I had to install it in compatability mode due to it saying Windows 7 isn't supported in the free version, then I just removed it as I didn't like it very much, so basically is the Windows Firewall sufficient enough? Also lastly can it be customised to be more secure or are the default settings ok? Thanks
MSE is good a antivirus program. I currently use Comodo Firewall and it is great. They are a great combination.
Get a hint pal before you open your mouth, the Win 7 Firewall is based on the same architecture as the Win 2k8 Server firewall and is VERY customizable, and VERY robust! Comodo has too many annoying popups, and it doesn't honestly work as well as some people make it out to be. I've been running the Win 7 firewall since day 1, along with MSE, and guess what, safe, clean, secure system!
An example : Say you've been infected with a trojan, it evaded the malware and AV detection... Then that trojan will want to establish an outbound connection at some time. When u have a good firewall that detects and blocks that outbound connection, you'll have this additional protection, even if you have a trojan. Just one example out of many So yes, it is important to have protection against outbound connections.
Yes, but don't some of the trojans just use internet explorer or one of the windows services that require outbound access, therefore masking itself from being identified as a new program?
Thats what Defense+ is for. It acts like a process-guard that tells you if/when any untrusted application tries to hijack a trusted process...