How many firewalls is to many?

hougstar · #1 (**permalink**) 27-11-2008, 06:44 PM

I'm currently in a debate amongst my friends about my firewalls.

I discovered yesterday that my desktops modem is actually a router, and has abilities that I never thought it had. It currently has NAT active with an active firewall(with an option for Stateful inspection). Along with the modems newly discovered abilities, my wireless router (Belkin) also has an active firewall and has its wireless security set to WPA. Now, all my computers run either Zone Alarm or Sunbelt firewalls...and I am thinking that I am pretty secure with the two firewalls in my routers.

Should I, or should I not disable my desktop firewall?

Digerati · #2 (**permalink**) 27-11-2008, 07:09 PM

You should NOT disable your desktop firewall. The problem is, routers assume everything coming from the "Trusted Zone" (your side of the router) is... "trusted" or safe. They also assume you know where you are going when you surf. And understand NAT's primary purpose is to allow multiple computers to share the same network connection. This does help hide your computer's true IP from wizkids and wannabe hackers, but offers little resistance to an experienced badguy. It is great you have a router, and I think every broadband user should, even with only one computer, but you still need a software based firewall on your computer. This helps ensure that should something get buy, or a user lets something by, and it attempts to "phone home" with your personal information or other payload, the computer based firewall will yell at you for permission.