No offense meant, but apparently you don’t know what you are talking about. Also, HIPS != firewall. Tired by this GRC + Matousec nonsense. We need a proper firewall testing somewhere, not similar crap.
so can i conclude that avast firewall is not enough protection?, should i use comodo instead? well im using it right now. Altough im using avast as an antivirus too.
A huge oversimplification: firewall = packet filtering. HIPS = a fuzzy term used for various junk that floods users with mostly unclear pop-up warnings about applications trying to do this or that or whatever else and asks them for permission and users always answer allow to get rid of the popup. If you answer deny to every message, you get Matousec rating of 100% in their tests. :
All right i understand. one thing is a firewall and another different is a HIPS. Avast has a firewall but no HIPS.
I’ve read somewhere that once the malware is IN the damage is done, however HIPS can’t be helpful in those situations? (no personal info leaking altough the malware is in?)
HIPS can be helpful in those situations IF the user selects the correct answer to the prompt. That IF is the main point of failure here. If you answer allow to all, it won’t help you. If you answer deny to all, you’ll kill your operating system sooner or later. And if you can choose a correct answer, you presumably don’t need any HIPS at all. ;D
So, IMNSHO better than HIPS are methods like using a limited user account with software restriction policies where you only allow users to execute stuff in %WINDIR% and %ProgramFiles% directories to which they lack write permissions, so they cannot save any files there, and hence cannot execute any malware they’ve downloaded, sandboxing browsers etc. etc. Those require almost no user intervention so this reduces the main point of failure (the user factor) to a great extent.
Enjoy… And - if you later on decide to reinstall Comodo or any other firewall/HIPS to get more pop-ups, make sure to uninstall AIS first and replace it with Avast Free or Pro. Never run two AVs or FWs at the same time.