Norman Personal Firewall keeps unauthorised users out of your system

Norman Personal Firewall

Organizations depend on corporate firewalls to protect and shield them from hackers and negative elements of the Internet. However, threats such as malicious JavaScripts, Active-Xs, Java Applets, exploits of applications, Internet enabled trojans, worms and viruses continue to be significant security threats to individual users that use the Internet/network.

Among other security threats are internal hacking - from inside your organization.

To prevent this from happening you need to be able to keep unauthorised people out of your systems.

A solution must be provided that secures the individual users from all these threats. This solution should be powerful and easy to use and should be different from a corporate firewall. However, at the same time it should use the successful models that gave corporate firewalls their blueprint.

The solution is Norman Personal Firewall (NPF). This is created to protect users on all levels, both at the office and at home. Norman Personal Firewall is both an application and packet level firewall, thus combining the two techniques used in corporate firewalls. Norman Personal Firewall uses techniques that are compliant with the TDI technology, and upgrading your operating system and applying service packs, does not render it unstable (an event that is common among other personal firewall products).

With an Internet connection and NPF, you can venture the information technology highway safely, knowing that you are being protected.

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Features:

Connection security
The Norman Personal Firewall will monitor every application that attempts a connection to the Internet/network closely. Each application will be automatically assigned its own "guard" for monitoring. Applications that do not use the Internet/network are free from any kind of monitoring. No longer will you connect to the Internet/network and have to worry that some applications in your system will send out information without your knowledge. Trojans that seek to control your system from an incoming connection will be detected, as well as scripts that attempt to send emails using your name.
You can control which peers who can view and access your shared folders and even prevent others from detecting your computer's presence on the network.

Collection of Behavioral pattern
While you surf the web sites on Internet, snippets of information are being sent out between your browser and the web sites you visit. These "cookies" are useful for the sites to differentiate between surfers, but could also be collected and used to provide information about your surfing habits.
Surfing information such as "referrer" (the web page you came from) can also be blocked.

Active Content Nuisance
Active-Xs, Java-/VB-Scripts and Java Applets are supposed to enrich the Internet experience for users. However, malicious versions of such can cause serious security breaches.
NPF gives you total control over which sites that can activate such behaviour on your PC, and which sites that should be stopped.
With NPF installed, these threats are history.

Parental Control Web browsing
This feature gives the "parents" a possibility to set up user accounts with different access rights to web sites.

Scenario: Mary that is 4 years old can only surf these sites (www.disney.com, www.norman.com etc.) John can surf all sites except those containing any pornographic material.

The banned sites are blocked by
- URL address
- words in the URL address
- content on sites (words in the banned word list matching words found on sites).

Parents can edit this banned word list. They can e.g. enter words containing things they do not want a child to see.

Time Control and Account Manager

Parents are able to define one or more accounts with user passwords.

Each account can be given a total time (may differ for each account) pr. day/week/month and/or special hours during the day.

Scenario: John may only access the Internet between 16:00 and 21:00 and a total of five hours a week. Mary can also use the Internet for five hours a week, but must do it between 13:00 and 18:00.

Check summing of all executables (applications) that are stored in the rules database (except for the system itself).

This way NPF will detect a possible trojan trying to pretend that it is a well-known Internet application.

Scenario: Somebody installed a backdoor trojan with the file name of IEXPLORER.EXE on your PC. This happens to be the same file name as Microsoft's Internet Explorer. NPF would most likely already have rules for this executable allowing it to access Internet sites using the http, https and ftp protocols.
NPF will, by its check summing technique, sense that the file was different than the one originally allowed to access the Internet, and alert the user.

The user will of course have the possibility to update the checksum if NPF detects a mismatch. This will only be accepted by NPF if the user acknowledges that the system has been updated with a patch, a service pack or a new version.

New features in Norman Personal Firewall 1.3

• File sharing detection and filtering support for Win 9x/ME/NT/2000 and XP.
• Filtering IP addresses using network range.
• Possible to define a rule that handles ‘Inbound’, ‘Outbound’ or both, reducing the number of rules needed.
• Optionally show the JavaScript that NPF is popping up on.
• Supports Fast User Switching on Windows XP.
• Five predefined Inter/Intranet basic security settings.

Additional features include

• Logging of URLs/processes/ports.
• NetBios support for Win 9x/Me (support for NT/2000 planned first quarter 2002)
• The ability to block sites by URLs.
• The ability to control packets of data, inbound and outbound on a per application and per site basis.
• The ability to block referring addresses.
• General IP blocking based on rules for processes, services and IP-addresses.
• Full support for TCP/IP and standard modem dialup connections
• Disabling file browsing in LANs, based on rules.
• The ability to block applications attempting to access the Internet
• Content Blocking based on site rules
• Cookies Manager based on site rules.
• Banner Advertisements
• The Norman Personal Firewall Wizard
• Rule editor feature

System Requirements für Norman Personal Firewall:

• Pentium II or higher
• Windows 95 / 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP

Prices:

The following article can be bought now directly from the supplier.

Norman Personal Firewall Professional 1.4 Parcel delivery / plus forwarding expenses Single user German WINME / WINNT / WINXP / WIN2000 / WIN95 / WIN98

EUR 40,00