Top 5 Best Window Firewalls

A firewall is software or a hardware device developed to prevent unauthorized access to your computer by viruses and from hackers. Without an active firewall, your computer will be vulnerable to getting infected by a malicious program, often within minutes of connecting to the Internet. A good firewall will block malicious programs from entering your system, but it can't do anything once the malware is already on the computer system. Here are my top 5 best firewalls for Windows. 

Comodo Firewall Pro is a powerful, free firewall utility. It uses a combination of multiple techniques (antivirus, sandbox, cloud scanning, firewall, behavior monitoring, vendors whitelist, etc..) to keep your computer from being infected. It is not advised for the novice computer user, however is still one of the best best Internet Security suite out there.

Comodo Firewall Pro: http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

ESET Smart Security comes from the same company that makes NOD32, one of the five most popular antivirus applications. It isn't cheap at $60, but is a powerful tool with a very low impact on system performance. With an extremely solid firewall and antispam filter, ESET Smart Security is worth its high price.

ESET Smart Security: http://www.eset.com/us/home/smart-security

ZoneAlarm is a free software firewall from a company called Check Point. Not only does ZoneAlarm detect inbound invasions, but it also lets you set per-application limits for outbound connections—meaning you can stop applications from connecting to the Internet, for example. The outbound firewall is certainly the strongest tool with ZoneAlarm as many users tend to leave Windows outbound protection off because they don't know about it.

ZoneAlarm: http://www.zonealarm.com/

Many users prefer to stick with their router's built in firewall. It works well for some users, as you don't have to run a separate application eating up RAM to get great firewall protection. Many routers firewalls also allow you to open up "holes" (which is called port-forwarding) that allow you for a specific application or computer to access the Internet freely without the router interfering with the connection.

Although I have been mentioning mostly third-party software firewalls, many of you are perfectly happy with the default Windows Firewall. It's built directly into Windows, runs quietly in the background, and blocks suspicious attacks without requiring you to install any third-party software. But one major drawback is that the built-in firewall of Windows can't stop malicious applications from sending outbound connections- something other third-party software firewalls can- but none nonetheless is still an okay tool for those who don't want a heavy firewall sucking up all their system resources.