Enabling the Personal Firewall in Mac OS X
A personal firewall is a piece of software installed on an end-user's computer which controls communications to and from the user's computer, permitting or denying communications based on a security policy. Both Windows XP and Mac OS X come with a preinstalled personal firewall that is very easy to activate.
Enabling the personal firewall on your computer takes only a few seconds and prevents malicious attacks on your system. Harvard Law School Information Technology Services recommends that all students enable the built in personal firewall on their operating system.
- Open the apple menu in the upper left corner -> select system preferences
- Double click sharing
- In the Sharing menu select the Firewall tab (between Services and Internet) -> click the Start button so that the sharing panel says "Firewall On." Congratulations, your firewall has been enabled.
Deciding Which Programs Can Pass Through Your Firewall
By default the Mac OS X firewall does not allow most file sharing options. If you would like to enable them click the On checkbox. If you need programs/ports/functions that are not on the list click the New button.
There are a number of other firewall products on the market, make sure that you do not have 2 or more firewalls running on the same PC as this will cause all of the programs to malfunction.