Kerio's Personal Firewall is a breeze to install; on our test system it correctly spotted the home Lan and asked if it was to be trusted. The default settings caused no problems with file transfer over the network, while protecting the PC from the rest of the Internet.

As well as firewalling, there's Internet filtering to remove adverts and block active elements such as VB Script or ActiveX. You can filter cookies, with separate options for session cookies, foreign cookies and persistent ones - more control than many packages offer. It can also stop personal information, such as credit card numbers, being sent over the web.

When a request for net access is made or an incoming connection spotted, an alert pops up and, as with other firewalls, you can accept or deny, and specify the same for identical alerts. You can also choose to create a custom rule, which is quite straightforward, though not as simple as in Outpost. If you want, it's possible to set up some pretty complicated filtering.

One minor irritation is that there's no option to scan for programs that you want to grant access; you'll have to wait for the alerts in each case and click to create the permissions automatically. On the other hand, that does mean you'll be absolutely sure what's connecting from your PC.

The interface isn't as slick as some alternatives and is more slanted towards the power user, with the main screen showing running applications and their connections. Logging is good - Kerio detected our nmap port scan and fingerprinting attempts, though it still popped up quite a lot of alerts during the process.We'd like it to have realised it was a port scan, then not pester us every few seconds.

Niggles aside, Kerio Personal Firewall is a good package. Perhaps not for the novice, it still has a lot of features for the price. Kerio Personal Firewall 4

Contact: Kerio 08707 442 205
www.kerio.co.uk

System requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2000/NT/XP

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