Serious Discussion Bitdefender firewall replacement?

[ncage]

So I have used bitdefender for a very long time & until about a year ago bitdefender firewall has some functionality that i never knew it had. I prefer not to get into the details but there is an endpoint that i have to expose to the public internet through RDP (please again lets not talk about the why i'm doing it like this or i will simply ignore those post). Bitdefender has a great feature in that it will detect x amount of attempts to login through RDP & will block the ip for an amount of time which is a great feature (i'm assuming its in the firewall part). Kind of like fail2ban.

I am considering going away from bitdefender when it expires for a variety of reasons:
1. From the memory perspective its QUITE heavy.
2. I think Microsoft Defender (especially hardened is quite good) especially considering some of the machine learning/AI stuff they have added.
3. I used to be able to get it dirty cheap on ebay. I have searched lately and apparently bitdefender has done something about that. Every time i have searched i could get it cheaper on amazon.

Is there anything like this that it either cheap or free? I much prefer something that doesn't require the subscription path.

 

[Bot]

Yes, there are a few alternatives you might consider. GlassWire is a network monitor & security tool with a built-in firewall. It's lightweight and offers similar features to Bitdefender. ZoneAlarm is another option, it's free and has a two-way firewall. For RDP protection, you might want to look into RdpGuard, which works like fail2ban. All these options are cheaper or free but do check their specific features to ensure they meet your requirements.

 

[bobdoe]

So I have used bitdefender for a very long time & until about a year ago bitdefender firewall has some functionality that i never knew it had. I prefer not to get into the details but there is an endpoint that i have to expose to the public internet through RDP (please again lets not talk about the why i'm doing it like this or i will simply ignore those post). Bitdefender has a great feature in that it will detect x amount of attempts to login through RDP & will block the ip for an amount of time which is a great feature (i'm assuming its in the firewall part). Kind of like fail2ban.

I am considering going away from bitdefender when it expires for a variety of reasons:
1. From the memory perspective its QUITE heavy.
2. I think Microsoft Defender (especially hardened is quite good) especially considering some of the machine learning/AI stuff they have added.
3. I used to be able to get it dirty cheap on ebay. I have searched lately and apparently bitdefender has done something about that. Every time i have searched i could get it cheaper on amazon.

Is there anything like this that it either cheap or free? I much prefer something that doesn't require the subscription path.

IPban protects against remote attacks (free and paid)

Features​

• Auto ban ip addresses by detecting failed logins from event viewer and/or log files. On Linux, SSH is watched by default. On Windows, RDP, OpenSSH, VNC, MySQL, SQL Server, Exchange, SmarterMail, MailEnable are watched. More applications can easily be added via config file.
• Additional recipes for event viewer and log files are here: IPBan/Recipes at master · DigitalRuby/IPBan
• Highly configurable, many options to determine failed login count threshold, time to ban, etc.
• Make sure to check out the ipban.config file (formerly named DigitalRuby.IPBan.dll.config, see IPBanCore project) for configuration options, each option is documented with comments.
• Banning happens basically instantly for event viewer. For log files, you can set how often it polls for changes.
• Very fast - I've optimized and tuned this code since 2012. The bottleneck is pretty much always the firewall implementation, not this code.
• Unban ip addresses easily by placing an unban.txt file into the service folder with each ip address on a line to unban.
• Works with ipv4 and ipv6 on all platforms.

GitHub - DigitalRuby/IPBan: Since 2011, IPBan is the worlds most trusted, free security software to block hackers and botnets. With both Windows and Linux support, IPBan has your dedicated or cloud server protected. Upgrade to IPBan Pro today and get

Since 2011, IPBan is the worlds most trusted, free security software to block hackers and botnets. With both Windows and Linux support, IPBan has your dedicated or cloud server protected. Upgrade t...

github.com

 

[Trident]

@bobdoe sorry, I didn’t get it. Are you the developer of ipBAN?

 

[bobdoe]

@bobdoe sorry, I didn’t get it. Are you the developer of ipBAN?

Sorry Trident, I really could have composed that better... I am not the developer, just suggesting software for op.

 

[lokamoka820]

FirewallHardening tool

FIREWALLHARDENING (new ver. 3.0.0.1, July 2024) FirewallHardening is a part of the Hard_Configurator project and can be used also as a standalone application among a few others included in the H_C_HardeningTools repository...

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