ZoneAlarm announces its Vista-compatible firewall

Posted by Robert Vamosi

Checkpoint has released an updated ZoneAlarm 7.1 that's designed to work with Windows Vista's architecture. This is the first true two-way firewall for the Windows Vista environment. Windows Vista includes the Windows Firewall, however, it blocks only inbound traffic, allowing all "except where excepted" outbound traffic. This may seem like a fine distinction, but it can be huge. If you acquire a remote-access Trojan on your Windows Vista machine, Microsoft may not flag the outbound traffic.

Checkpoint explained its delay in releasing this product in an e-mail. "Rather than rush to market with a patchwork solution when only a small fraction of our users were actually using Vista," the company said, "we decided to invest in the long-term." This includes building the product on Microsoft's Windows Filtering Platform API, rather than continuing to use the soon-to-be outdated TDI API. Not only does this provide ZoneAlarm with more stability under Windows Vista, but it means Checkpoint won't have to rewrite its code when TDI does expire.

ZoneAlarm continues to provide a free version in addition to its paid versions. Its Internet security suite continues to use best-of-breed third-party products such as the Kaspersky antivirus engine and MailFrontier antispam filters.

Source: Cnet News.com

Aha. Well that would explain why I was unable to connect to the beta test site to check for an upgrade earlier this afternoon. I was puzzled why I kept getting the "The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests." message. Now I think I know why... There are probably tens of thousands (millions?) of Vista users chomping at the bit to download ZA for Vista.

I'm hoping that the public release version loads faster than the beta version did. I understand that the beta version is setting up all kinds of diagnositcs and log files, but it would add a solid minute to my Vista boot time to load the beta and during that time I was unable to do much of anything with the system (i.e. start other apps.)

Good news but I think they jumped the gun here.

I can't find any official confirmation or download on their site (just checked).

Well, maybe tomorrow...

With regards to ZoneAlarm:

I do not like it in my box

I do not like it, it's <deleted>

I do not like it with XP

I do not want it in my PC

I do not want it here or there

I do not want it anywhere

I do not like ZoneAlarm

I do not like it, it has no charm.

Its completely redundant on Vista. No need for it.

Its completely redundant on Vista. No need for it.

Do you really trust the MS offering??

Its completely redundant on Vista. No need for it.

Do you really trust the MS offering??

Yes, because I'd never put full faith in any software firewall. My router is the principal defence.

A firewall (or any tool for that matter) is only as good as the person who wields the tool. After the nightmare of Zonealarm, I've never used anything other than, yep, the router and the included Windows firewall. I also don't use anti-spyware (stupid), anti-adware (bogus), and anti-whatnot. I only have an antivirus program installed. Even if you have say all the anti-thingymagigs installed, if you use your computer stupidly you'll still get infected quite easily (I've seen it happen many times). OTOH, even if you have the minimum of protection, you won't get infected if you know how to avoid these things.

Thanks to Steve Jobs for this blog post. The download posted (7.1087) is not official yet, on zonealarm.com you still get the old 7.0337 version and the latest beta is 7.1058.000. We don’t know when they will release the below download to the public.

Operating System: Windows Vista (XP and others, see webpage for more info)

Product Name: ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite

Software Version: 7.1.078(Vista)

The Most Complete Internet Security:

* Protects you online and off.

* Blocks the full spectrum of threats on your computer and in the physical world.

* Stops threats before they infect your PC.

* While other suites only detect and remove malicious programs, ZoneAlarm prevents attacks on your system.

* Easy to set up and use.

* Simple to install and run, the intuitive interface tailors the program to meet your needs.

Download:

ZoneAlarm v7.1.078 (link 1)

ZoneAlarm v7.1.078 (link 2)

The filesize is app. 42 MB!