While all versions of Windows since Windows XP (that was released 22 years ago) are coming with one or other types of firewall software, many of the Windows users always stay unimpressed with the in-built Microsoft Windows Firewall or Defender Firewall. There are always options for you to install a third-party security software that comes with a firewall in addition to a good antivirus. But if you want to keep Windows Defender Firewall then you may want to extend its functionality or make it easy for everyday use through an open-source software Fort Firewall.
Fort Firewall is not a complete firewall itself. It just adds more features on top of the already existing Windows Firewall. It works on all versions of Windows starting from Windows 7 to Windows 11. Fort Firewall allows you to make some useful changes to your Firewall settings. It allows you to filter by network address or application, stores network traffic statistics, supports wildcards in path names of any software. It integrates itself with Windows File Explorer so that you can right-click on any EXE and configure its firewall settings.
For any application, we can choose whether it has to be blocked or allowed to access the internet. We can also decide whether the same set of rules are to be applied to all the child processes. Interestingly, we can choose at what time and for how long the rules are going to be applied. For example, you can allow a new browser only for a day after which you have to decide again.
Furthermore, it has its own kernel based driver which is based on the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP). This drive is installed on the system for monitoring the network traffic. Because of this driver Fort Firewall is able to graphically display the bandwidth of any connected network in great detail.
All the settings of Fort Firewall are accessible from the system tray icon. We can choose to block all the network traffic, stop all the internet traffic and, auto-allow all the new applications, using this system tray menu.
All in all, Fort Firewall adds an ease-of-use to an already very efficient firewall that comes with Windows operating system. You will no longer have to go through the complicated interface designed for Windows Firewall and can quickly block any program just by right-clicking on it.
You can download Fort Firewall from https://github.com/tnodir/fort.