Open Door Networks is shipping a Mac OS X specific version of its Who’s There? Firewall Advisor, which has been available since January for Mac OS 8 and 9.
Who’s There? Firewall Advisor works with Symantec’s Norton Personal Firewall for Mac OS X (which, by the way, is based on technology licensed from Open Door) and Open Door’s Doorstop line of security solutions for Internet-connected Macs. It’s designed to help users analyze and react to access attempts detected by your firewall.
“Mac OS X’s Unix base presents some interesting security challenges for Mac users,” said Alan Oppenheimer, president of Open Door Networks and co-author of the new book Internet Security for Your Macintosh: A Guide for the Rest of Us . “Who’s There? Firewall Advisor for Mac OS X alerts users to attacks that might not have been significant under previous versions of the Mac OS, and provides them with advice and suggestions specific to Mac OS X.”
The product offers an Access History window that displays all logged access attempts (including security risk level and host name of the accessor). There are also windows summarizing access attempts by service type and accessor IP address. Who’s There? Firewall Advisor offers built-in information about the most common attacks and their applicability specifically to the Mac OS X environment.
An Automated “Whois” lookup helps determine details of an accessor’s network, including administrator name, address, phone number and e-mail. What’s more, the administrator’s address is plotted on a world map. There’s also automated drafting of an e-mail that can be used to notify the administrator of the access attempt.
Features new to the Mac OS X version include a column indicating whether an e-mail has been sent in response to a particular access attempt, and support for new top-level domain names like .biz and .info.
A free evaluation version of Who’s There? Firewall Advisor for Mac OS X is available directly from Open Door’s Web site. You can also purchase the Mac OS X version there for US$49. Registered users of previous versions of Who’s There? can upgrade to the Mac OS X version for $29. There are also volume and site licenses available.
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