what is firewall

A firewall is a device or set of devices designed to permit or deny network transmissions based upon a set of rules and is frequently used to protect networks from unauthorized access while permitting legitimate communications to pass.

But in our personal computer our windows operating systems includes software based firewall to prevent hackers or malicious software (such as worms) from gaining access to your computer through a network or the Internet. A firewall can also help stop your computer from sending malicious software to other computers.


For example Fire walls performs the following tasks to protect our computer
1)protects the user from unwanted incoming connection attempts
2)Alert the user about outgoing connection attempts
3)Allows the user to control which programs can and cannot access the local network and/or Internet
4)Hide the computer from port scans by not responding to unsolicited network traffic
5)Monitor applications that are listening for incoming connections
6)Monitor and regulate all incoming and outgoing Internet users
7)Prevent unwanted network traffic from locally installed applications
8)Provide the user with information about an application that makes a connection attempt
9)Provide information about the destination server with which an application is attempting to communicate
Thats why we should keep Firewall on always...


To turn on your Firewall please follow the below steps :-

 Open Windows Firewall by clicking the
Start button -> clicking Control Panel_> clicking Security, and then clicking Windows Firewall.

Click Turn Windows Firewall on or off. 
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Click On (recommended), and then click OK.

If you want the firewall to block everything, including the programs selected on the Exceptions tab, select the Block all incoming connections check box.