Defenseless?: Antivirus vs Firewall

Dear Geek,

My neighbor was shocked to find out that I don’t have a firewall on my computer.  I have antivirus software on my computer.  Besides, I don’t have national security information stored, do I really need a firewall?

Defenseless?

Dear Defenseless;

You may not have national security information, or the gate code to Angelina Jolie’s house, but you do have personal emails, and most likely banking information, credit card numbers from online shopping, etc stored on your computer.  Without a firewall, it’s like putting a “Welcome” mat out for cyber criminals.

An antivirus analyzes any file that comes through your system for all known viruses in its virus definition database, and cleans, quarantines, or deletes them per your choices of settings.

A firewall monitors the Web traffic in & out of your computer, and it allows only specific types of data to reach your computer.  If the data doesn’t meet the right standards (e.g. if an Internet application attempts to access an area of your computer where those applications aren’t allowed), the firewall blocks the application.

Firewalls are generally good at blocking many types of attacks:  IP Spoofs (an attack where someone fakes an IP address of your computer, or another one on the network); DoS attacks (“denial-of-service” attacks, where the attacker sends an overwhelming series of data packets from a single or multiple IP addresses, in an attempt to bog down Web access); port scans (where a hacker will look at the various free ports in your router in an attempt to find a loophole he can exploit), and any other suspicious activity that occurs when a hacker attempts to trick his/her way past computer security.  A firewall is also able to reject unsolicited communications (e.g. someone outside your local network trying to connect to your computer).

In short, yes, you need a firewall.  You also owe your neighbor at least a coffee for alerting you to your to your shortcomings.

If you have a question for our Resident Geek, send it to:  geek@tbyd.ca.  We’ll translate it from Geek-lish to English, so it actually helps!

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