To David... and Outpost Firewall users and lovers.

General Topics
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Mixed Impressions on Outpost 4
According to FirewallLeakTester.com, Agnitum Outpost 4.0’s leak-test functionality is designed to block a very broad range of leak tests. In its fully aggressive mode, Outpost 4.0 may make your life a living hell with repetitive prompts. It’s nice to know, however, that you can ratchet up the protective power any time, even if you wind up turning down to one of Outpost’s more permissive modes (as I did).

I installed Outpost Pro 4 on a machine running F-Secure Anti-Virus 2006. In other words, I tempted fate, since both products contain anti-spyware and F-Secure is noted for its strong tendency toward incompatibility. I disabled Outpost’s anti-spyware scan during installation, but the anti-spyware module came up running by default post installation. It is possible to fully disable it at that point.

With F-Secure running alongside Outpost 4, I quickly ran into difficulties. It worked fine for a while, but on subsequent reboots I found that Outpost froze or that my Internet connection died. I was also unable to make my VPN connection work, even though I directed Outpost to give it full rein.

Eventually I was forced to remove Outpost in order to get any work done. I’m currently setting up a test machine that will provide a cleaner environment for Outpost to give it a proper test. This first two-hour experiment was a little unfair.

I can draw some conclusions from installing and using Outpost even for that short period of time. Outpost 4 may well be the most powerful and comprehensive personal firewall I’ve examined. This product is loaded with good features. The graphical log file, which also allows you to make settings changes, is absolutely superb. The level of fine control is perfection.

On the other hand, the networking control features are less clear-cut than I’d like. And for my simple tastes, Agnitum has packs way too many extra modules into this package. I don’t want anti-spyware in my firewall. I also don’t want content filtering, ad blocking, Internet-based sharing of my settings, attachment quarantine, or DNS caching. I would be quite interested in “Outpost 4 Lite,” if such a thing existed, consisting of the firewall, application controls, intrusion detection, leak protection, and network monitoring.

So, bottom line, I will continue to test Outpost 4 to give it a fair shake. And if you’re looking for a top-notch firewall with a lot of bells and whistles, this is almost certainly it.

But I’m crossing it off the list of lightweight firewalls that are under consideration for my ongoing series: “Looking for the Right Software Firewall” because it it’s so much more than the simple firewall I’m looking for.

From: Scot’s Newsletter HTML - Nov. 2006

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Read it and I’m not having any issues, I don’t use the plug-ins other than attack detection and DNS Cache.

When you first install any firewall you are usually on the receiving end of a barrage of pop-up questions, that as time goes by these steadily reduce. Outpost asks what to do about existing programs when you install to automatically recognise the programs and apply standard rule sets/permissions for them. This can reduce the number of these pop-up questions after installation.

The anti-leak functionality can be a little daunting if you don’t know your way around what programs are running and what is a legitimate request or action for that program etc. The trick is reading what is said in the pop-up rather than just react to it and automatically click Allow or Block, etc.

For those who aren’t to familiar with the ins and outs of firewalls and the like, you can always change the Policy from Rules Wizard, to either Allow most or Block most, depending on the level of paranoia.