Firewalls

[Donovan Lambright]

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

We've been using McAfee's PCFirewall on many of our online catalogs (which run through a web browser) to keep people from using the catalog to surf the Internet.  It allows us to specify IP addresses that are allowed or not allowed on that workstation.  Thus we can restrict the user to only the IP with the catalog.  This has worked well for us.

Now, however, I have been informed that McAfee is no longer supporting the product.  Furthermore, it cannot be used with Windows NT if you are using Service Pack 3 or higher.  For these reasons, PCFirewall's days on our network are numbered.  McAfee doesn't have another product that performs the same function.

Although the product refers to itself as a firewall, it is not like a standard firewall.  It is installed to the workstation, not a server.  This gives a great deal of flexability in which workstations to block.  Also, each workstation can have different settings.  We've used PCFirewall on some workstations to allow access to just the catalog, on other workstations to allow access to just selected Internet resources (databases), and on others to access a mix of the two.  I am really unhappy to see this piece of software go away.  I've not had any luck finding a similar product on the web and wondered if anyone out there has seen a comparable package.  Thanks.

Donovan

Donovan Lambright
Computer Services Supervisor
Missouri River Regional Library
PO Box 89
Jefferson City, MO  65102
(573)634-2464