Very often, personal computer users are faced with such a concept as a firewall and, unfortunately, do not always understand the difference between a firewall and antivirus.
Windows firewall
Windows Firewall dates back to Windows XP SP2 and is still in use today. Some personal computer users, not noticing the difference between a firewall and antivirus (if there is a second), turned off the firewall, considering it useless. Unfortunately, such people are very deeply mistaken. Simply put, a firewall is a means of detecting and alerting a user to a problem, and an antivirus is a means of finding malicious software on a computer and fixing it. Still, you need to understand these concepts in more detail.
The launched firewall is blocking various incoming connections. For example, before the advent of the firewall at the heart of Windows operating systems, a user's computer could become infected with a computer worm in a matter of minutes, even if an antivirus was installed on the personal computer. Yes, the antivirus could detect the problem and fix it, but malware still entered the system. With the release of Windows XP SP2, users have no longer needed to find and install a firewall on their own. The operating system firewall can block access to various system resources if the user is connected to a public network, not home. In the event that the user is connected to a home network, he can independently open access to any data.
Naturally, the user has the right to install on his computer not only the original Windows firewall, but also a third-party one. Only in this case, they will inform the user about the found threat absolutely always, while the original firewall does it in the background, and in the end, the user will still get as much benefit from the free Windows firewall as from a third-party one.
Summing up
It goes without saying that you need to have both a firewall and an antivirus on your computer. While the former will notify the user about the majority of malicious programs from the outside (from the Internet), the latter will eliminate them. Consequently, the presence of both programs is extremely important for ensuring the proper level of security on the user's personal computer, but even in this case, one hundred percent guarantee against infection is impossible, since new malicious software appears all the time.
