how good is the "BLACKICE" firewall security program ?

Hello au142,

Thanks for the question.

In my opinion, BlackIce is not an effective firewall. Let me show you
some other opinions:

Steve Gibson, one of the industry's best experts on such things says
at his page on Leak Testing:

http://grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

"NetworkICE's BlackICE Defender Update
Apparently Designed to Mislead its Users

Eleven Months after the release of our first, simple, but effective
and popular (3,411,561 downloads) LeakTest firewall testing utility,
BlackICE Defender (BID) continues to "leak"  as defined by LeakTest.
But a recent update to BID (version 2.9cai) was hiding this fact from
its users by effectively cheating the LeakTest.

Rather than enhancing BlackICE Defender by adding the sort of
application-level controls that are available even from many
completely free personal firewalls, BID's publisher, NetworkICE,
apparently chose to prevent LeakTest's intended operation by adding
specific awareness to BID of LeakTest's remote testing IP. "

Do read his entire article.

I have used MOST of the free and shareware firewalls and can tell you
they are all a bit different. You will find differences in personal
preferences, but rarely admonitions not to use a product. Black Ice
seems to be the exception. The primary reason is that is is really not
a firewall, per se, but an intrusion detection device. It doesn't
block outgoing packets that might be dangerous.

Even The Guardian Angel, who gave BlackIce an 8 out of 10 rating,
notes this limitation:

http://www.theguardianangel.com/product_review_blackice.htm

Weaknesses

"(BlackIce) does Not block outbound communications requests, so make
sure that you keep an up to date anti-virus program active with the
most current virus definitions to spot Trojans."

At the Firewall Guide, Personal Firewall Reviews -
http://www.firewallguide.com/software.htm - you will find links to
additional reviews. Windows and .Net Magazine has a comparison of some
of the popular firewalls here:
http://www.winnetmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=25348&pg=1

Their conclusion states:

"Which Firewall to Choose 

Out of the six personal firewalls I reviewed, McAfee Firewall, Norton
Personal Firewall, and ZoneAlarm Pro are great choices. These three
firewalls are feature-rich and integrate well with antivirus and
privacy tools. Norton Personal Firewall is the most secure, but McAfee
Firewall is the easiest to use. Tiny Personal Firewall and BlackICE PC
Protection aren’t in the same class as Norton Personal Firewall and
McAfee Firewall but are still very good. (See Table 1 for details
about each product.)"

This seems to be consensus wherever you go to seek firewall reviews.
And there are numerous web sites that discuss firewall differences and
merits.

I would strongly recommend the following, all which have both free and
more full featured shareware products available. Some require more
expertise than others and have a steeper learning curve. All will
better protect your system than BlackIce in my opinion..

ZoneAlarm
www.zonealarm.com

Sygate
http://soho.sygate.com/

And Outpost
http://www.agnitum.com/

Good luck selecting the right firewall for you.If anything above is
unclear, please do ask for clarification.

Regards,

-=clouseau=-

I agree completely with clouseau... One of my recent projects was to
review and evaluate software security packages for my company,
including firewall software. BlackICE was tested but came up lacking.
I would highly recommend ZoneAlarm, especially if this is for your
personal PC. It is free for personal use, and it's easy to setup and
configure.
If this is for a company, you might lean towards the McAfee or Norton
solution as you can often get a corporate package deal to include
anti-virus or data encryption also.

au142,

I have been using ZoneAlarm Pro for over a year now. Based on my
research before purchasing that software, clouseau's advice is right
on-target. Given the sophisticated types of viruses, worms, and
spyware being produced today, you NEED your firewall to block outgoing
communication, unless you give your explicit permission for that
communication.

I would recommend that, if possible, you use the paid version of
ZoneAlarm or other firewalls that are available for free. Usually the
cost is pretty reasonable ($30-80), and you get much more ability to
customize and direct the functionality of the program (plus features
not found in the free version). Once you get your settings tweaked
properly, very little intervention will be required on your part, and
the firewall will pretty much run silently in the background.

These days, your firewall is a VERY critical part of your home or
business computer system, and is probably NOT the place to cut your
software costs. Recovery from a malicious intrusion will cost much,
much more, in terms of your time and money, than that initial
expenditure for the firewall would have cost.

I hope this little addition to clouseau's excellent advice will prove
useful to you.

Regards,

aceresearcher

Regarding Steve Gibson (GRC), please, PLEASE take the things he says
with a grain of salt. On some issues he does bring up some valid
issues, but for the most part he's just a marketing expert with only
basic computer knowledge. While I could go on rant after rant about
how much his ignorance angers me, this page does a good job of putting
it into perspective:
http://www.grcsucks.com/

As for personal firewalls, Norton Firewall (based on the tried and
true personal firewall AtGuard), and ZoneAlarm are great for the
average computer user.

If you are a home user zonealarm is free, very easy to use, and
extremely effective. I use it, have tried a variety of security sites
on the web to test it, and it always performed flawlessly.