Microsoft takes down barrier in Vista firewall

by admin April 28, 2006 at 4:40 am

The firewall in Windows Vista will, by default, have half its protection turned off because that is what enterprise customers have requested, according to the software giant.

When Windows Vista is released early next year its firewall will be set to only block incoming traffic even though it will be capable of blocking outgoing traffic. According to a statement from Microsoft, the firewall’s protection will be curbed in order to make life easier for the company’s enterprise customers.

“Because the nature of an outbound firewall is to restrict the traffic sent to specific ports, the outgoing access in the Windows Vista firewall is open by default,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet Australia. “The reason for this is Microsoft has received strong feedback from its customers, especially from large organisations and government departments, saying that they would like to manage this feature from an administrator level.”

Microsoft claims that configuring the Vista firewall to block outgoing connections from rogue applications and malware will require a varying degree of technical knowledge, depending on each user’s security requirements.

Full article: ZDNet Australia