14 DAY TRIAL // Each security suite these days has a firewall module designed to block any sort of inbound/outbound connection taking place behind the users’ back. Online Armor has been around for quite a while and proved from earlier stages of development that it is a reliable instrument capable to intercept surreptitious communication on your computer.
The application comes in three versions one of which, with the simplest feature set, is free of charge. Online Armor Premium and ++ versions are similar, but the latter packs more power as it sports antimalware protection and a rootkit scanner.
Although the free edition may seem pretty feeble, it is only in comparison with the paid ones, since it puts at your disposal all the standard protection of the firewall. What it lacks is the phishing filter, file and registry shields specific to Online Banking Mode, DNS spoofing protection and the import/export function for the settings.
Priced at $40, Online Armor Premium comes with a pretty much click-through installation process, but there are some components that may trigger a reaction from the operating system’s security part. The prompts will be the result of the firewall’s requirement to install its network service and adapter. As soon as you okay the procedure everything will continue normally.
Before restarting the computer (which is an absolute must) and benefiting from the firewall’s protection you have to go through the Safety Check Wizard. This is necessary in order to reduce the amount of alerts the firewall produces for trusted programs.
The deal is pretty simple and you can choose to trust everything currently installed and running on the system or you can pick the items (processes, start menu entries and startup elements) you trust yourself. Either way, it is not a painful operation and it can be finished in a short amount of time.
Online Armor Premium sports a standard working mode, which shows only the most important options and an advanced one for those who want more granular control. A third working mode is called Banking Mode and when enabled it will allow your computer to connect only to trusted or protected domains.
The method used by the bundle to prevent connection to malicious addresses while in Banking Mode is pretty simple: the user builds up a list of accepted domains and everything else gets blocked. All this is done in Domains menu of the suite. Simply add a web address and then you can instruct the application to trust it or protect it against re-directs. For the latter Online Armor uses a DNS checker to make sure you don’t fall victim of more elaborate phishing scams.
The firewall component in the suite, which is also the core part, is built intuitively, so that any type of users finds their way without too much trouble. As expected, Advanced Mode brings more menus and finer control to the table, but this does not make configuration a complicated job at all.
You can create rules for each of the programs detected by the application as well as add your own entries to the bunch. Configuration includes defining the ports and protocols that should be used for communication, connection type (inbound/outbound), IPs and countries denied/allowed. Thanks to the Safety Check Wizard at the beginning of the installation you will generally appeal to this section only to fine tune how the firewall handles the connections. Overall, creating specific rules for is an easy task.
You will find that Online Armor Premium is more than just a simple firewall monitoring what applications communicate outside your computer and where the endpoint it. Based on a rigorously-built internal database, OASIS, it can automatically make a decision depending on whether the program is trusted or untrusted. Through Program Guard protection layer it checks the apps for malicious behavior.
This way it can raise the flag whenever a suspicious app engages in an activity on your computer only when it is uncertain of its intention, leaving the course of action to your judgment. Additionally, to increase protection, it lets you launch suspicious apps in a safer environment by running them as a limited user, despite the active account being one with administrator rights.
RunSafer feature thus appeals to Windows 7’s inherent security measures and limits the actions a suspicious program might engage into to those of a limited user. Furthermore, any app fired up by the program using RunSafer “enjoys” the same restrictions.
Online Armor Premium’s protective umbrella extends over files on the system and registry entries. To put it shortly, trusted programs in OASIS are allowed to handle registry keys and sensitive files on the computer while untrusted ones are denied. In the case of unknown programs you will receive an alert and prompted to take an informed decision, since you are presented all the details of the action triggering the alert.
Alerts are issues if an unknown program tries to enable itself to run with the operating system. You are provided with a list of all the items currently starting with Windows along with the possibility to grant or deny them this action. Again, untrusted elements are blocked automatically by Online Armor.
Another functionality of the bundle is detecting keyloggers. Obviously, you can create a list with such programs you’re okay to run, but those capturing keystrokes or screenshots behind your back are reported immediately.
The configuration panel in Online Armor is more like a general setup screen, since fine tuning is specific for each component and you’ll find granular control in their menu. However, among overall firewall options you’ll find that you can enable Windows Firewall if OA is disabled or turn on the firewall activity icon in system tray.
Additionally, this is the place to set up the locations you want outside Online Armor’s protection. Power users can define shortcuts for common actions like toggling between the three working modes available or deactivating HIPS (Host-based Intrusion Protection System).
Online Armor Premium offers multiple layers of protection against any sort of intrusion as well as anti-phishing protection and measures to maintain system integrity. During our tests the suite managed to protect us from a huge number of attempts to compromise our system’s security.
Bypassing attempts included DLL injection, BITS impersonation, several hijacking, multiple rootkit installation and browser abusing techniques. Despite the bombardment we put it through it successfully alerted us of the intrusion and the type of action attempted on the system.
It showed it is a reliable firewall. More than that, it can be used to securely run financial tasks as well as keep sensitive information safe from being compromised by keylogging activities or exposed through registry breaches.
Banking mode restricts access to any website outside the whitelist you create, thus ensuring you’re navigation does not stray to shady redirects. You can rely on the database to grant permission to trusted programs to run unhindered as well as block untrusted one automatically. There is full firewall customization with regards to ports and protocols used, direction of the connection or endpoint restrictions. HIPS is capable of detecting malicious behavior and reports it immediately to the user. Pop-ups put at your disposal a hefty set of options, which allows you to indicate that the program triggering the alert is a trusted one, thus instructing Online Armor it should no longer monitor it. Our experience with Google Chrome while running Online Armor Premium took a sluggish turn. The browser would move noticeably slower and some websites we visit regularly failed to load at first launch. With Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 everything ran fine, though. The protection it offers extends beyond what a regular firewall as it includes various working modes and lets you impose restricted permissions for specific software.
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