Drives Have Their Own Firewall Now

good
key review info
application features
  • Prevent malicious programs attacking data in your folders
  • (7 more, see all...)

We all know that when working with a computer we only see a fraction of the actions actually taking place, at most. However, when launching an application there is much more activity than what we see on the screen. Settings are loading up, access is permitted for the process driving the respective application, modules for the process are loaded, locations on the disk are being accessed, etc., and all these happen sometimes in under a second, depending on the application we deploy.

There are no warnings and users generally have no idea of all the activity taking place backstage and have no control on what is written to disk or of the data written to the registry. Keeping tabs on what different applications are running on your computer can help you a lot with keeping your PC as healthy as possible and running at optimum parameters.

Firewalls are generally designed to monitor the activity of applications on your computer and deny or alert the user about all unauthorized connections, protecting you against information leaks to the outside. Drive Sentry's purpose is pretty much the same, but its activity applies to drives, folders, files and registry entries.

Advertised as a firewall for drives, Drive Sentry is designed to control what applications write to your files. It practically allows or denies writing activity of any application you have on your computer. For an easier control users benefit from a predefined database of whitelist apps that represent no threat to your machine and from an Advisor that gathers the actions of all DriveSentry users regarding various applications.

The software comes for a $10/10 EUR/10 GBP price, depending on the region you are buying it from and can be tested for a period of 30 days with full functionality. There is also a version for portable devices but it is pretty crippled with regards to the settings and all is pretty much automatic with it.

Installing the program is done with absolutely no difficulty and at the end of it you are asked if you want to download DriveSentry Advisor database or not. Once you've passed that a wizard will pop up letting you make a minimum configuration of the way DriveSentry will protect you.

The three modules available are Protection, Scanner and Advisor and placing your mouse on their icons will cause for a brief description of the module to be displayed. Protection module's Settings panel is brief and to the point, allowing you to choose the general type of files to be protected by the application (music, videos, pictures, Office files and programs), computer settings (Internet, general System settings and start-up settings) and drives (you can enable protection for writing to removable devices).

As DriveSentry also acts as an antivirus with more than 600,000 signatures in the database, you get to configure it to automatically quarantine malicious files and enable the scan of common program file types only (EXE, COM, etc.). You should know that relying on DriveSentry's capacity of weeding out nasties does not represent too much of a protection as it is not a full-fledged antivirus and it will only check some of the files for infections. Also, it cannot scan archives and does not come with proactive protection.

Auto-Advisor's role in the application is to provide you with a list of trusted programs that are automatically granted write access. The list of settings for the tool includes auto blocking of malicious programs and auto allowing of white-listed programs as well as using DriveSentry's community advice. The latter comes in handy when you bump into an application and you are not 100% certain of its activity.

Immediately after these settings have been made, DriveSentry will proceed to scanning your computer for trusted applications. The list is available almost instantly and in case there is a false positive or you do not trust an item in the list you can trim it down. The Online Advisor is at your disposal allowing you access to the statistics for each application in the list.

Users can see what other community members had to say about a certain process and the community approval. However, it seems that the system is not yet tested to the last loose end as in some cases an item may have 0% approval/disapproval from the community and it is not incorporated by DriveSentry's database and yet it is available in the list (so it is already labeled as good).

The interface of the application is neat and clean cut, with no bells and whistles, just options designed to increase its functionality. It is user-friendly and should not pose any problems, regardless of the computer skills of the user.

Protection module mentioned above is available in the interface as well, for more specific configuration settings. It is split into three tabs (Standard, Advanced and Trusted List of applicaitons), each with its own set of options.

Standard tab of Protection module permits the user to define the folders and file types that should be protected by DriveSentry. In the case of folders the program will automatically permit writing to all applications in Trusted List. In the case of file types you can enrich the list with additional extensions and DriveSentry displays the trusted application associated to the file; no other program will be able to open that file without your consent.

Advanced section of this module pretty much does the same thing, but there is a different approach to it. You will be displayed all protected items on one side and the list of trusted applications on the other. Depending on the protected item selected specific apps related to it will be checked in trusted programs window. You can also add more items to be protected (files, folders, registry entries or extensions) with the slightest effort.

Besides the fact that DriveSentry protects certain areas of your drive from being accessed by different programs, it'll also allow you to decide per-application permissions. Users can set rules for each program in Trusted List granting them restricted access. An application can have the right to write files anywhere on the disk, but not in the registry and on removable media. Access section of the application permits just that.

The three rules available for now apply for files, removable devices and registry writing. Creating a new rule for a trusted program is extremely easy if you know exactly what you want. A trusted application can be prevented from writing to the registry but allowed to write on a removable device or in a file. DriveSentry's flexibility goes as far as allowing you to choose what type of files can be written to what drive/folder.

However, there are still some issues to be fixed. During our testing it happened more than once for a trusted application to gain new rules out of the blue or, if deleting all the rules for an application it would disappear from the list completely. And although the app was not in the list it was perfectly able to conduct write operations unhindered. A much better approach would have been DriveSentry to prompt the user for permitting or denying the action and not allowing that application writing action by default.

Scanner's purpose in DriveSentry is to check the content of specific files before writing to drive for malware. It will verify every file written to disk for malicious content even if the app initiating the action is a trusted one. The tool is also capable of performing on demand scans of specific folders and files and its flexibility goes as far as monitoring key file types on your computer and scheduling scans.

If malicious content is discovered the file will be immediately sent to Quarantine and encrypted in order prevent the execution. An item can be sent to Quarantine when Auto-Advisor is on and a malicious program attempts to write to drive (the action is automatically blocked and a malware pop up will give you the warning). The same thing happens when a good program writes a malicious file to drive.

The options available in Quarantine window permit restoring the item to its original state (decrypting it) or banishing it from the disk.

For each action that takes place on your computer with no visible trace DriveSentry will keep a log including the time and date, source initiating the action and the destination as well as the state of the permission: granted or denied. The great thing is that it'll keep tabs on both file and registry writes.

Options window of the application is simply designed to offer users control over pop ups and several program options. Thus you can set your own speed for the pop ups, change their position on screen, alert colors, enable notification on removable devices, set the maximum number of logs to store, enable the scanner or auto-quarantine malicious programs.

The application is extremely easy to use and the idea of having a monitoring tool for the files written to drives, specific locations in the computer and especially in the registry is absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately DriveSentry has a lot to fix as there are still glitches that allow trusted programs to write to registry or on drive without alerting the user.

However, this version of the software is at the beginning (it is a pre-release) and there is time to make the right adjustments. DriveSentry comes as a firewall for drives, monitoring all file writes from different applications. Although it does a pretty good job, there are mishaps and freezing your computer every once in a while is one of them.

The Good

The interface and the idea of having a monitoring tool for write operations on drives and in the registry is great and could get you out of trouble in the nick of time.

DriveSentry is extremely easy to use even by newbies and the support of the community can be what you need when in doubt about a process. The database it makes available is also a very good solution.

Live Help feature on their website is just great. You get to talk to a real person and s/he will provide you with all the help you need. Your questions will not remain unanswered.

The Bad

Although at a first glance DriveSentry seems like a stable program it still has lots of fixes to be done before coming out as a full fledged firewall for the drives.

During our testing we experienced the addition of new rules out of the blue, computer freezing and allowing full access to trusted applications although "Auto-allow white listed programs" option in the wizard had been unchecked.

The Truth

DriveSentry is a work in progress and with a little effort they will get the appreciation they deserve for the software. It is beautifully designed and its purpose is to protect the writing of files on your drives as well as securing user defined locations on the disk.

Unfortunately this version still has issues and may not raise to your standards. However, given the fact it is a pre-release, it will receive the default award from Softpedia. As soon as a final release will be made available we will proceed to re-testing it.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 3
features 3
ease of use 3
pricing / value 3


final rating 3
Editor's review
good