Is your Mac secure? A little paranoia goes a long way these days. Despite the recent rash of Mac malware, your favorite personal computer remains a relatively strong, secure, dependable investment.
Basic precautions should keep your Mac free of most Trojan Horse malware, but there are some things you can to heighten security. The Mac has a built-in software firewall that’s actually turned off.
Even worse, the firewall’s controls are obscenely sophomoric, despite plenty of capability built-in. Maybe this is a little of Apple’s arrogance showing. Whatever it is, there’s a way to improve the firewall, make it easier to manage, and the app that does it is free.
IceFloor is a front end app for Apple’s built-in Mac OS X Lion firewall. Select the services you want to allow in to your Mac and block everything else.
You can create a list of local network IP addresses that are allowed to connect to your Mac, effectively blocking out everything (and, everyone) else.
Your Mac’s firewall also tracks outside attempts to connect to your Mac and you can view those in IceFloor.
The center of a firewall’s universe is rules, and you can create and edit rules for all ports and services on your Mac. There’s even a built-in TCP port scanner so you can check on what’s open and what’s not.
All IceFloor does is use the Mac’s built-in firewall so there’s no app that needs to keep running and chewing up resources or battery.
Not bad for free, right?
What’s the catch? If you’re new to firewalls you’re in for a surprise. Firewalls can be very complex to manage so it’s no wonder that Apple hides the firewall in OS X Lion.
IceFloor assumes you have some knowledge of connection ports, rules, and other firewall functions.
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