Reviews rankings firewall software

Note that Microsoft changed the name of Windows Defender to Microsoft Defender and has expanded the service to other platforms. This free antivirus program is built into Windows and it's turned on by default, the antivirus engine does its thing, and this antivirus solution will cover the basics of internet security. Microsoft pushes new updates frequently. Defender also lets you tune the level of protection you want, giving you control over blocking potentially unwanted apps and protecting folders and files from a ransomware attack.

Note that Windows 10 will automatically disable its own Windows Defender antivirus when you install third-party antivirus. If you uninstall the third-party protection, Windows 10 will turn back on its own antivirus. Norton antivirus provides industry-leading security software for PC, Mac, and mobile devices. Note, we don't think antivirus protection is terribly useful outside the Windows realm. In addition to malware and virus protection for your computer and mobile device, this antivirus suite provides GB of backup to the cloud, safe-browsing tools, a secure VPN, password manager, parental controls and LifeLock identity theft protection and fraud alert.

While not all of those services are necessarily best in their respective class, getting them all in one package is a compelling option. If you'd like to take a step up in securing your PC without taxing your wallet, it's hard to beat Bitdefender's free antivirus software for Windows The Windows security software offers real-time monitoring for viruses, malware, spyware and ransomware protection.

Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition is easy to set up and stays out of your way until you need it. And the protection this antivirus product offers is solid. Bitdefender antivirus software consistently earns top marks for its antivirus protection and usability from the respected AV-Test independent testing lab. The free antivirus version covers one Windows PC. Malwarebytes does protect your PC from a virus or malware attack, scoring reasonably well in recent independent testing for guarding against malware threats.

But that's not really what Malwarebytes is known for. If you find yourself in trouble, the go-to disinfectant for many is Malwarebytes. To get the antivirus company's free antivirus version, download this trial version , which "downgrades" to a no-fee on-demand cleaner with fewer features that detects and removes viruses and malware when you run an on-demand antivirus scan after 14 days.

In addition to the four antivirus apps we recommend above, a handful of other anti-malware tools are worth considering among the best antivirus protection if you find them at a better price or just prefer to use one over our picks above. It feels like McAfee Antivirus has been around forever, first on its own in the '80s, then as part of Intel starting in , and then again on its own when Intel spun it off in And McAfee Total Protection has been around forever because quarter after quarter it creates solid, modern antivirus software that protects your PC.

In recent evaluations by AV-Test, it had high scores on both protection and performance. Maybe this antivirus provider is not as well known to consumers because of its focus on enterprise security, Trend Micro antivirus quietly brings its business expertise to the home with its Trend Micro Maximum Security tools.

Trend Micro's software earns high marks from AV-Test -- consistently scoring well for detecting zero-day attacks and widespread viruses and malware. And Trend Micro does a good job of not taxing system resources. Free version? It earns high scores for usability and offers solid virus protection. The free antivirus version of Sophos Home gives you virus protection for three Windows PCs -- using the company's high-scoring anti-malware tool -- plus a day trial of the company's malware-removal tool.

Test after test, Avast Antivirus for Windows performs well for malware detection with options ranging from Avast free antivirus software to Avast Premium Security. And we've included its antivirus in our list of recommended security app options before.

But Avast was in the news for several months for its non-antivirus business, so we looked at the company, specifically reports at the end of that Avast allegedly collected user data with its browser plug-ins and antivirus software and then sold data it collected through its Jumpshot subsidiary in early In response to the reports that his company gathered and sold the details of its customers' online activities, Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek said in a statement that he understood that his company's actions raised questions of trust in his company.

To address that, Avast terminated Jumpshot data collection in January and closed its operations because the data collection business wasn't in line with Avast's privacy priorities. These newer reports follow another in from Avast that its internal network was breached , possibly to insert malware into its CCleaner software, similar to an earlier CCleaner hack that occurred prior to Avast's acquiring the Windows utility.

Avast is now saying the right things about taking its customers' privacy seriously , but it only came to that point after reacting to investigative reporting that revealed the Jumpshot practices. The CCleaner revelations, while concerning, were self-disclosed, which is important to building user trust.

We hope Avast's more privacy-friendly policies mean that there will be no further Jumpshot-style activities and it returns to glory as one of the best antivirus software. In the meantime, we'd recommend using one of the many other solid choices in this realm listed above. Because the company has been in the news the past few years, let's talk about Kaspersky Lab -- specifically about the federal ban that blocks US government agencies from using Kaspersky Antivirus products.

Based in Moscow, Kaspersky Lab has for years produced some of the best antivirus software for business antivirus needs and home customers. But in the US government prohibited Kaspersky security cloud software on federal government computers because of alleged ties between Kaspersky and the Russian government. Showing - of 39 results. Industry: Retail. Time Used: More than 2 years.

Review Source: Capterra. A good product that keeps getting better every software release. The product started from a very specific and limited view. The product improvements make it useful from not only a pure security role but also a compliance role. The product started out giving me a very good look at firewall information and has continued to expand that information more and more. In the case of my installation, we use the information from the firewall sent via SNMP, so the additional information allows for us to look and search for threats in another pane of glass.

We already used several other ManageEngine products and with the price point it was a must-get. Angie from Bank of Stockton. Company Size: , employees. Industry: Financial Services. Real time alerting on firewall changes. Firewall Analyzer support is very good, fast and efficient. When I started working for the bank they already had Firewall Analyzer and other Manage Engine products. I never wanted to look for other vendors. I am happy with their products. Company Size: 5,, employees.

Industry: Computer Networking. Time Used: Less than 12 months. This manage engine feature easy to manage our other vendor's firewall. So far , I quite happy with the product as its can communicate with our other vendor firewall and able to grab data from there. Easy to read data and easy to manage the data and easy to present to Customer. Easy to manage and really user friendly to access teh logs and read the data. This software very lagging sometime and taking too long to grab the data.

Ricky from Western Technology Center. Company Size: employees. Industry: Education Management. Reporting and drill down capabilities. You have very good control of tables for the reports you can add to or take away tables to customize the reports to your needs.

Nice clean GUI where things are easy to find and understand, there is a small learning curve with the wording but from what I've seen this is one of the easiest GUI's I've seen for this type of product. Tech support is very responsive and the technicians seem to be very knowledgeable not only in working with the MangeEngine software but also with the settings on our firewall.

The up front cost is not cheap but the ongoing support cost is very reasonable. I highly recommend this product and I searched for a while in fact when the product we were using for this purpose was discontinued I spent a number of months looking for the right solution to fit our needs before finding and testing this software.

This information can be found using search tools and you can view the syslog being written but it has a refresh instead of seeing it written in real time. We were using SonicWall Analyzer then they discontinued that product and switched to SonicWall Analytics which didn't have the same reporting features, or ability to view the syslog.

Company Size: 1,, employees. Industry: Printing. Industry: Utilities. We use other ManageEngine products and have yet to be dissapointed in them. This is no exception. Great bit of analytical software that operates as advertized and provides added perspective to a vital part of network infrastructure.

This software has made it easy to spot inactive or overactive policies and adjust accordingly. Additionally, the compliance analysis has been very beneficial in identifying and closing gaps in our security posture. There was a small hiccup in the deployment of the software, but the customer service team was amazing. They had the engineering team quickly look into and resolve the integration issue. Cost, ease of deployment into our existing ME environment, great customer service experience.

Shubhankar from Hughes Systique Private Ltd. Industry: Information Technology and Services. Time Used: Less than 2 years.

Interface is easy to understand, helps us to monitor logs on our firewall and to enhance our security. Manuel from IFM. Time Used: Less than 6 months. I had a good experience with this product, especially with customer support. Always ready and available for questions, 24 hours.

You can find all the reports you need. Very useful the rules management, it helps you to keep clean you newtork environment. It breaks easily. Maybe this product is still young, but I found out that is very fragile. I opened several tickets to customer support because of bugs or other kinds of problems.

Industry: Capital Markets. Jim from Michaels Stores. Easy to use firewall configuration management and anaysis tool. The web browser-based application console is easy to use. Information is presented is well-organized and easy to understand. Firewall Analzer requires that Check Point firewalls have the firewall interfaces identified with spcific zone names. This will require that zone names be applied to all interfaces. As a tool for want I need, it is good. Does it have issues?

Yes and when they pop up, support is quick to help. The ability to collect the logs from the PaloAlto Firewalls. The reports are much better than Panorama.

The main reason was for the VPN audit. Next is the info tor the brute force login attempts. Much easier to read the info this way. The software has no concept of High Availability. Following best practices, the logs and maintenance should be using the management port. This keeps the logs away from the traffic port. Firewall Analyzer FWA forces the admin to change the setting. Having 2 sets of HA firewalls is not the problem, it is the licensing method.

When first installed, it was fine until the firewall was failed over. Why because the IP address is not licensed. Once figuring out the fix, support did not help, only verified, the history data in the DB becomes unavailable because it is tied to an unlicensed IP address. The best thing about Untangle that I tout to other IT people in our industry is the reporting. Untangle has extensive reporting abilities and is easily configurable to a large scenario of different needs.

The granularity of the filtering ability is a very close second to the reporting. I have fine tuned my Untangle appliance to fit our very specific needs in the utility industry. I also really like the centralized management component. I have Untangle appliances in multiple places and I can manage them all from my desktop. I really tried to come up with something that I didn't like or something that I would like changed, but the more I use it the more I like it.

Industry: Financial Services. Overall, all monitor actions can be easily monitored in one place. Therefore, the dashboard that's installed in the software makes it way easier to manage the security policies. I was amazed by the ease of use and rules implementation in this product. It's really good at preventing our organization from internal and external attacks. The only issue I've had with this product was the reporting tool so far.

It can be enhanced. We made the switch because it did a better job of reducing the amount of false-positive attacks. Company Size: , employees. Support is some of the best I've ever used, very responsive and knowledgable about advanced networking and their product in general, even at T1 support.

I love that it can be installed on your own hardware or even a VM if you're feeling fancy. The features of the free version are great foa SOHO and the paid versions are relatively inexpensive if you'd like or need additional features or protection. The UI is intuitive and the oly problem I've had with them is when there's a hardware failure not often, but at my peak I was managing upwards of of them. I'm not a huge fan of their pricing model for SMBs.

It's easy to be in the "in-between" and requres a lot of overhead; one must exclude MAC addresses of "bypassed devices" think printers and the like that will literally bypass the firewall, or they must pay for the higher license tier. Typically licenses like this are per user, seat, etc.

Jonathon from The Moody Church. Industry: Religious Institutions. Layer 7 traffic shaping and bandwidth control was a great added bonus. In addition to a standard Layer 3 and 7 firewall, Untangle also includes numerous VPN for site-to-site and client, extensive web content filtering, WAN failover and balancing, and many other applications.

It is a one stop solution for most SMBs. The licensing can be pricey compared to competitors. Setting up HA Failover can be complicated. The big thing with Untangle is the ease of use. We're a small I. Untangle's interface is easy and intuitive enough that we can jump into it quickly and move on. We don't have to refer to notes to figure out how to do something complicated.

Untangle gets it The product is very easy to use, that's it's big selling point. Historically they've been a little slower on the development side, features roll out behind the big guys. Industry: Mechanical or Industrial Engineering. Untangle gives you only what you need, when you need it. It is the best Gateway system out there for any over worked, understaffed IT Dept.

Works out of the box in minutes Support is great too Haven't really found one yet Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management. Great product for youth serving organization. Overall very happy with our experience and anticipate continued use. It can be so detailed and customized that its intimidating to learn everything and utilize full functionality. Time Used: Less than 2 years. This is one of the opensource UTM out there.

I used this version for some time. Free version works as expected with certain services are limited. Setup is comparatively easier than other similar opensource UTM. Kaleb from Liberty Baptist Church. This is the easiest Firewall I have ever worked with. Untangle has made monitoring my network easy and convenient. Couldn't recommend it more. The ease of deployment and features for an affordable monthly cost are unbeatable.

The software is great, wish there were different hardware options on some models. SSD on all I say In just fifteen minutes, the experts at Software Advice can help you narrow down the right software for your organization.

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