Discover The Windows Vista Firewall 

Here we will take a quick look at some important aspects of the Windows Vista Firewall...

The Windows Vista firewall is a "critical first line of defence" to protect your computer against many types of malicious software.

More advanced than the Windows Firewall in previous versions of Windows, the firewall in Windows Vista helps protect you by restricting other operating system resources if they behave in unexpected ways-a common indicator of the presence of malware.

Important Points Regarding the Windows Vista Firewall:

There are TWO interfaces to access the Windows Firewall on Vista. The "basic configuration" via the Security Center and Control Panel and the "advanced configuration" interface via a snap-in when a custom MMC is created.

You can also access the Windows Vista firewall as an administrator from the command line and through Group Policies.

The Windows Vista firewall defaults to a secure configuration, in which most inbound connections are blocked and outbound connections are allowed. The Windows Vista firewall works in conjunctions with Vista's new "Windows Service Hardening" so that if the Windows firewall detects behavior that is prohibited by the Windows Service Hardening network rules, the firewall will block that behavior.

By default, incoming ICMP echo requests are allowed through the firewall, and all other ICMP messages are blocked.

It is possible to setup multiple firewall profiles on your computer, so that you can have a different firewall configuration for different situations.

You can customize IPSec settings to specify the security methods to be used for both encryption & integrity.

Data encryption for IPSec connections is not enabled by default, but you can enable it and select which algorithms are to be used.

You can restrict connections on criteria such as domain membership or health and exempt specified computers from connection authentication requirements.

You can create inbound and outbound rules to block or allow connections for specific programs or ports.

You can block all connections for a program, allow all connections, or allow only secure connections and require encryption to protect the confidentiality of the data sent over the connection.

You can create rules to block or allow connections based on Active Directory user, computer, or group accounts.

You can also use the Windows Firewall With Advanced Security to enforce Network Access Protection (NAP) policy.

The firewall also fully supports a pure IPv6 network environment.

This list is not exhaustive but does contain some very important points...