Firewall To Basic?

nibb

Hi everyone, Im testing BD over Norton which I used for the last 2 to 3 years and before that was using KIS for over 2 or 3 years as well.

There is something which is bugging me and I can´t understand about BD.

I need to allow/disallow apps connecting to the Internet and the first thing I miss from Norton is the allow this instance option, which only allows that single execution. In BD the option are only is allow or disallow, actually I think the allow this instance in Norton is not perfect either. Why doesn't any product have a temporary allow is something mind blowing.

Why not have an option like allow for 5, 10 15 minutes?

There are allot of things you need to allow access just for some brief period of minutes, like installers, updaters, etc, most things I use one time and never again. Norton and neither BD has this, to allow only for some time, but this is not the real reason I post this.

When I allow some software, lets say I ping something via the command line in Windows, BD asks for access and I click allow. But then it asks again for every single time I ping a host. Why? I already allowed ping.exe once.

I assumed, ok, its creating the rule only based on the remote host connection its opening, so I checked the firewall and this is not true. When I edit the rule its allowed for all remote and local hosts, so why does BD ask me again every single time? But what is worst is that it actually creates a new rule for every time I execute it. This behavior is similar in other software. And I now I end up with allot of rules, basically each time I execute it.

Also, why isn't there a setting to save all my rules or export them? I mean, if you have 50, or 100 custom rules, its a pain to recreate them again. Is this how the firewall actually works? Or I would say does not work?

Georgia

Hi nibb,

There are no temporary rules for the Firewall module of Bitdefender 2013. You can switch if OFF from the main panel and re-enable it when you are done or switch to Auto-pilot - this will also turn on the Firewall.

You can temporarily disable only the On-access Scanning (from Settings > Antivirus > Shield > On-access scanning > OFF). As soon as you switch it OFF, the product will ask you for how much time you want to disable the antivirus protection (5, 15 or 30 minutes, 1 hour, until system restart or permanently).

The Firewall rules are stored in C:\Program Files\Bitdefender\Bitdefender 2013\settings\firewall\rules.xml

You can save a copy of this file on your desktop -let's say-, reinstall Bitdefender 2013 and then paste the initial .xml file in the above mentioned folder, in Safe Mode. All the previous saved rules will be imported in the product.

Feel free to post back if you have other questions.