Operating the firewall

In the status area of the firewall, you will find basic information about the current status of your system and the firewall. You will find this to the right of the relevant entry as either text or numerical data. In addition, the status of components is also displayed graphically. By double-clicking the relevant entry (or selecting the entry and clicking the Edit button), you can directly select actions or switch to the relevant program area.

As soon as you have optimised the settings for a component with a warning icon, the icon in the Status area will revert to the green check icon.

•Security: As you use the computer for your daily tasks, the firewall gradually learns which programs you do or do not use for Internet access and which programs represent a security risk. Depending on how familiar you are with firewall technology, you can configure the firewall to provide either highly effective basic protection without an excessive number of inquiries or professional protection customised to your own computer usage habits – however this also requires detailed knowledge of firewalls.

•Mode: Here you are informed with which basic setting your firewall is currently being operated. Either the manual rule creation or automatic (autopilot) are possible here.

	Automatic (autopilot): Here the firewall works fully autonomously and automatically keeps threats from the local PC. This setting offers practical all-around protection and is recommended in most cases.
	Create rules manually: If you would like to individually configure your firewall or do not want particular applications to work together with autopilot mode, you can adjust your firewall protection entirely to your requirements via the manual rule creation.

•Networks: Naturally, the firewall monitors all network activity such as a DTN (data transmission network) and a LAN connection. If one or more networks are not protected, for example, because they were manually excluded from firewall monitoring, a warning icon will alert you about this. Double-clicking the respective entry opens a dialogue box via which you can individually configure the rules and settings for the selected network. Here under Rule set, simply select whether the respective network is supposed to belong to the trustworthy networks, the untrustworthy networks, or the networks to be blocked.

The Direct Internet connection setting is, for the most part, based on the settings that also apply to Trustworthy networks.

Each network can be assigned a special rule set. Whilst the Networks area tells you which networks are available on your computer, the Rule sets area tells you which automatically created or user-defined rule sets are available in the firewall.

•Registered attacks: As soon as the firewall registers an attack on your computer, this is prevented and logged here. More information is available by clicking on the menu item.

•Application radar: The application radar shows you which programs are currently being blocked by the firewall. If you still want to allow one of the blocked applications to use the network, simply select it here and then click the Allow button.