I just installed comodo firewall and I would like to know the suggested settings. I don’t understand the setting up of rules. Is this firewall safe without setting up rules? Is there a place on the internet I can go and find the settings
I (re-) installed mine yesterday. The first thing that should pop up is some dialog asking you to identify your network. Once that’s done, COMODO will behave like Window’s own firewall, from what I can figure out: all outbound traffic is good, all (uninitiated) inbound traffic is bad. If that does for you, good. Most folks will install stuff like COMODO to get more, though. I use it because I want to ward against catching a Trojan, worm or whatever and then have this thing exploit my network adaptor. That is, I want to see who on the inside is talking to the outside. If you wonna do that, here’s what I do:
Go to Firewall/Advanced/Network Security Policy. Find the rule that reads “All Applications”. First of all, move it to the bottom of the list. Next, edit the green rule that says sthg like “Allow All Outbound Traffic” and check the box at the top right that reads “Log when rule is fired”. Save. After this, keep an eye on your Firewall Traffic Log (Common Tasks). Your ambition is now to keep this log clear. The only way you can do this is by adding rulesets, bit by bit, for every application on your machine. (All these apps pass by default thru All Applications.) As you keep adding rulesets (each one will NOT log), there will be fewer and fewer messages added to your log. Until all is clear. At which point you can completely log down your machine by disabling the All Outbound rule.
I should be more precise. When I wrote that “Your ambition is now to keep this log clear.”, I meant that you want to keep it clear of “Allowed” messages. You will always catch the occasional block. That’s why we run firewalls. Sorry for confusion.
These two threads are a good starting point to get basic settings right:
https://forums.comodo.com/firewall_guides/setting_up_firewall_for_maximum_security-t30535.0.html
https://forums.comodo.com/defense_guides/setting_up_defense_for_maximum_security-t30473.0.html
And you can consider setting firewall’s Alert Frequency Level to Low instead of Medium: