When you want to protect your internal network, either your business network or your home network and you want to install the firewall yourself, there is an option to use a Linux firewall application. Linux has many benefits about installing applications by yourself, of course you need to learn some Linux to do so, but that is one of the reasons why it might be a good idea to get to know Linux. You can install almost anything that you might need, and it’s free.

I am specifying a couple of good ones, but there are many more. I set a link at the bottom of this article, that links to a very long list of firewall options 🙂

Firestarter – When you’re using a desktop version of the Linux operating system, you can use this graphic firewall application.
•    Easy to use graphic interface (might ease configuration if you have some basic understanding of how firewalls work).
•    This application is of course an open source application, and free.
•    The firewall enables more than one station to be connected to it and of course be protected.
•    You can easily define inbound and outbound traffic – which are of course the core of firewall designation – defining who can exit and who can access the services from the internet.
•    The firewall includes – white-list & black-list traffic – who is allowed and who isn’t
•    You can monitor the traffic, see what is passing through your firewall and online events.

Endian Firewall – This firewall is based on the open source most common command line Linux firewall called IPCOP, This firewall includes web filtering (Web Proxy), SIP Proxy (for Switchboards), VPN, Content Filtering, Mail gateway, Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Anti-fishing etc…
Some of it features are:
•    There is an easy to use web interface – web management service to configure it.
•    It supports Routing and NAT (for configuring what is allowed and disallow to pass through the firewall.
•    Port forwarding
•    Network traffic logs, Reporting system.
•    IPSec VPN – for VPN secured access from outside the network.
•    Anti -Virus is based on the Clam AV mechanism.
•    Traffic monitoring is by using the nTop.
•    SPAM Protection using pyzor
•    Dynamic DNS support
•    Dnsmasq – is used for the DHCP and DNS.
•    There is also Windows based support – Samba, LDAP, RADIUS.

SmoothWall Express – This firewall offers a good security firewall, for minimal hardware, which can be fitted well on old computers with old slow configurations. This firewall is being configured using a web based management console. You can configure ADSL, ISDN, Web Proxy, DHCP configurations.
There is a nice video that shows and explains about the Smooth-Wall.

There are many other options which you can read on at this link 🙂

Even though we thought Linux operating systems didn’t need Virus protection, it seems the precaution is being taken. There was a belief that since Microsoft
operating systems where the most used operating systems at the public, the virus developers will produce windows designated viruses. But as the Linux operating systems are starting to grab more and more users, who choose to use the open-source version of the operating system, which are also free. Linux operating systems are bringing almost all of the features that are included in the Microsoft operating systems. Even though they are not as smooth as Windows, they are pretty close.

Anyway, since Linux operating systems are being used by more and more clients, it seems the risk of viruses on a Linux system might be imminent. So, some Anti-Virus applications for Linux are popping up now.

Some of those Anti-Virus applications for Linux are:
Panda – The antivirus is suitable for servers and desktop versions of the Linux operating system. You can manage it from a command line (as it is the most usable interface on a Linux OS). The Panda anti-virus for Linux is intended to protect the Linux and Windows operating systems in an environment altogether.

ClamAV – This anti-virus application is designed basically for scanning e-mails on mail gateways. It has a couple of utilities and daemons, command line control, and database storage of automatic updates. This anti-virus seems to be a very common engine for anti-virus scanning on Linux.

RAV – This application is designed for the Linux desktop version. It has a graphic user interface that enables a change of anti-virus scanning settings. You can use it to schedule scans and has a control center that warns and manage the prevention options of anti-virus outbreak.

Vexira – It is mostly an anti-virus that is designed to protect file servers and samba servers. So it mostly protects files in a shared folder environment. It provides real-time protection for e-mails, files, and download operations.

Sophos – This anti-virus application is protecting all of the different interfaces in Linux, both desktop and server operating system versions. It has good

performance stability and reliability for scanning Linux systems and covers most of the known Linux distributions.

Kaspersky – The Kaspersky Linux version, has a module that interacts with the operating system to protect Linux files, monitor changes and modifications that are made
on files, this module is the on-access feature, which enables real-time protection. Another module is the on-demand scanner which will protect any added devices, removable devices (USB, Media, etc…).