14 DAY TRIAL // A computer without a firewall is like a house without a door, and while you can shoot trespassers or just ask them nicely to leave, once your computer gets a virus, spyware or another kind of evil entity from the Internet, things aren't that simple...and I don't even want to think about the possible consequences!
Let's leave the bad thing behind and look at what we have here - a new firewall, called SecurWall. Its latest version is 0.98, but it's not final yet, so what I have here is only a prerelease. Anyway, the good part is that this program is completely free to use, and the bad thing is its lack of reliability, as we shall see. The setup package has 1MB in size and comes inside a 1MB ZIP archive. Once you start the installation process, the adventure begins...at least mine did, but I can only hope it won't be the same for you!
While running the program for the first time, you are required to enter your email address in order to receive an unlock code for using it freely. Nothing new here, the programs from Fresh Devices also require a free registration for being used longer than 10 days. I enter my address into the text field and I don't click the Next button, but get back to my Web browser and other tasks instead, nothing unusual. After a while, I get an error and SecurWall crashes! It was opened in the background and waiting for my input, nothing more! Well, I got back to it, entered my email address again, I received the code really quick, and I finally started this application. Now, let's move to the interface and features and continue our adventure, shall we?
The first thing that you'll see is the main window of this program, and I must say that this doesn't look bad at all. There are five panes to notice here: the menu placed to the left, the traffic graph, active applications, traffic control and network activity. The menu has six items, and this is what we're going to explore now.
I have just told you about the Main area accessible from the menu of the program's window, because this is the default screen you see each time you start the program. The most important setting available here can be found in the traffic control area and allows you to choose the behavior of the program, but best idea would be to use the default Rules setting.
Before moving on to the second item of the main menu, SecurWall crashed once more, and I also got to allow or deny access to some programs that I use and tried to access the local network or the Internet. Let's move on to the next crash now...excuse me, the next area!
The Logs screen has two areas to be noticed - the Traffic Log, and the Security Log. The first one enables you to check all connections established by the programs on your computer with the outer world, while the Security Log stores attacks that targeted your computer and have been detected.
The Rules that can be applied here can be based on the application that tries to access the network/Internet or the resource that is being accessed, so you can instruct the firewall to grant full access to Maxthon, but also let all applications connect to the IP of your website, for example.
The Options area has only one screen, and this is a good thing, adding a little to the program's ease of use. Here, you can change the filter level (exactly the same setting available in the Main area), get information about the current program version and network adapter currently filtered, select the application's language, enable and disable certain features like ping and local servers blocking or program autostart, and even protect access to the program with a password.
Next two areas are not finished yet, but I can tell you that the Ghost surf seems to be an interesting IP hider, and the Help area...we must wait for the final release to see it, unfortunately. These being said, it's time for the conclusions.
The Good
SecurWall looks good, has enough features to make it an interesting choice, is easy to use and completely free!
The Bad
The worst thing about this program is that despite its features and ease of use, it's really hard to consider it useful when it crashes on a regular basis...
The Truth
All I can say about this program is that I would really like to see it work for at least two hours without a crash. If that happens for you, consider yourselves lucky, because it seems I'm not that lucky today. Good luck and stay safe with SecurWall!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
