Key Concepts You Need to Know
Online Armor is a firewall that offers advanced system protection to help ensure your privacy. Online Armor takes a different approach to security, identifying potential threats before they have a chance to get through the firewall while providing greater ease of use.
Most antivirus and anti-spyware programs use a database of known threats to identify malicious files, and anything not specifically detected is allowed to operate freely. Unfortunately this approach cannot keep up with the ever increasing tide of new threats that emerge every day, and most firewalls cannot safeguard your privacy against many of the tricks that these threats may use.
To address this situation Online Armor not only identifies known threats, but also allows you to block anything that may be potentially dangerous. Online Armor offers a multi-layered approach to help stop attacks before they reach your computer. If they do reach your computer then it will try to stop them from working. If something malicious does manage to run or trick your computer into going to a phishing website then Online Armor will stop it from succeeding. Even if something malicious, such as a Trojan or keylogger, still manages to do its work, Online Armor will prevent it from silently connecting to the internet to contact the attacker!
Online Armor does this by focusing attention to anything that is particularly high risk. Today’s attacks depend, in great part, on hiding the truth in order to slip by unnoticed. Online Armor combats this by drawing your attention to the “slight of hand” and protecting your computer against the tricks that can’t be seen.
Features such as Autoruns and IE Add-Ons will show you all changes made to these areas of your system. Online Armor will automatically allow any changes that are known to be safe, and give you the information needed to make an informed decision about any other changes. In this way, Online Armor provides greater protection against new threats that may otherwise go unnoticed, while still being easy to use.
To make this process easier, Online Armor attempts to identify all program files and classifies them as Trusted, Untrusted, or Unknown.
- Trusted programs are known to be safe and allowed to run and access the internet without restriction. Online Armor uses an internal list of Trusted programs that is updated by the Online Armor team. Updates to the list are downloaded by Automatic Updates. You can also configure Online Armor to treat a program as Trusted on your computer in the Programs section.
- Untrusted programs are programs that have been identified by the Online Armor team and are believed to be malicious or undesirable. Online Armor will block any Untrusted program that tries to run and alert you.
- Unknown programs have not yet been examined by the Online Armor team and cannot be specifically identified as malicious or safe. When an Unknown program tries to run Online Armor will pop-up and ask you to Allow it to run or Block it.
If you allow an Unknown program to run, Online Armor will categorize it as Allowed on your computer. Allowed programs will be allowed to run, but they will be monitored by Online Armor for potentially malicious behavior. Online Armor will pop-up and ask you if the program attempts to connect to the internet or perform any high-risk actions, allowing you the opportunity to Allow or Block the action.
If you block an Unknown program from running, Online Armor will categorize it as Blocked on your computer.
All programs that run on your computer will be listed in the “Programs” section in the Online Armor Control Panel. You can visit this section to change any file’s classification or change the advanced options to fine tune how Online Armor monitors or protects the program.
Note: If you do not want to be prompted when Unknown programs run on your computer then this feature can be disabled in Options under the General tab. Online Armor will then behave more like a traditional antivirus or anti-spyware program when it comes to identifying malicious programs.
Firewall
Online Armor’s Firewall is made to minimize the prompts you see and be automatically configured as much as possible, making it easier to use. Online Armor will not display complicated prompts and alerts about “invaders” or “attacks” and it will automatically allow any known system components to do what they need to do. It also won’t ask you to make complex decisions about how a program may connect to the internet unless you want it to.
Online Armor will initially run in Standard Mode, and any Trusted programs will be automatically allowed to access the internet by default. You will only be asked to Allow or Deny internet access by Allowed Unknown programs, and any Untrusted programs will be automatically blocked.
Most users will not see any pop-ups, as Online Armor will automatically be configured to Allow common programs access to the internet and automatically Block any malicious programs that may be present.
If you need to make a change to Allow or Block a particular program from accessing the internet then you can change this in the Firewall section of Online Armor under the Rules tab. This will also allow advanced users to set additional restrictions as desired.
Note: If you do not want Online Armor to automatically Allow Trusted programs, you can change this setting in the Options section of Online Armor under the Firewall tab. Simply uncheck the option to “Automatically allow Trusted programs to access the internet.”
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