Windows Firewall Control is a nifty little application which extends the functionality of the Windows Firewall and provides quick access to the most frequent options of Windows Firewall. It runs in the system tray and allows user to control the native firewall easily without having to waste time by navigating to the specific part of the firewall. This is the best tool to manage the native firewall from Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, Server 2008, Server 2012.
Malwarebytes acquired Windows Firewall Control in June of 2018. Binisoft Windows Firewall Control will quickly integrate into the Malwarebytes platform, which simplifies the deployment and ongoing management of security solutions. Following the acquisition, the full-featured edition of Windows Firewall Control has been re-released at absolutely no cost (the notifications system is now available for free and the program does not require activation anymore).
Windows Firewall Control offers four filtering modes which can be switched with just a mouse click:
High Filtering - All outgoing connections are blocked. This setting blocks all attempts to connect to and from your computer.
Medium Filtering - Outgoing connections that do not match a rule are blocked. Only programs you allow can initiate outgoing connections.
Low Filtering - Outgoing connections that do not match a rule are allowed. You can block the programs you do not want to initiate outgoing connections.
No Filtering - Windows Firewall is turned off. Avoid using this setting unless you have another firewall running on your computer.
Program Features:
- Intuitive and easy accessible interface in the system tray, next to the system clock.
- Full support with standard user accounts. Elevated privileges are required only at installation.
- Disable the ability of other programs to add Windows Firewall rules.
- Multiple and easier ways of creating new rules in Windows Firewall.
- Integrated support of creating, modifying and deleting Window Firewall rules.
- Lock feature which can disable the access to the settings of the program and Windows Firewall.
- Shell integration into the right click context menu of the executable files.
- Display invalid rules with the possibility to delete them very quickly.
- Merge multiple similar rules or duplicate existing ones.
- Search for executable files through folders and create new rules in seconds.
- View recently allowed and blocked connections and create new rules from the Security log.
- Choose if you want the program to start at user log on.
- Import, export and restore all firewall rules or just the selected rules.
- Protection to unauthorized uninstallation.
- Possibility to restore previous settings at uninstallation.
- Global hot keys are supported and various shortcut keys are available.
- And many, many more. Just try it out.
Other specific features:
- Notifications System which provides notifications for outbound blocked connections. Four modes available:
- High - Display notifications for all outgoing connections that were blocked, including System and svchost.exe.
- Medium - Display notifications only for regular programs, without notifications for System and svchost.exe.
- Low - Automatically allow digitally signed programs. Notifications are displayed only for unsigned programs.
- Disabled - Notifications are disabled.
- Create temporary rules which are automatically deleted when they expire or on program restart.
Windows Firewall Control 6.2 changelog:
- Improved: Remote addresses content is now expanding to fill the available space in Properties dialog so that more content can be displayed.
- Fixed: Properties dialog is not displayed anymore if two or more Windows services have the same Display Name.
- Fixed: The service name for svchost.exe notifications is detected only for the Windows services that are already running when WFC service starts. If a Windows service is started after, the notification will not detect the Windows service that triggered the notification.
- Fixed: Unhandled exception is logged if certain files are missing from the installation folder.
- Fixed: When editing a rule details in the Notification dialog, the rule name can be set as one or several empty spaces.
- Fixed: Properties dialog can"t apply changes to a rule if the path of the rule is not accessible or not found. This limitation was removed. Also the tooltip was updated since a rule with red text does not always mean the file is not found, it can also mean the file is not accessible (file located in a folder of another user account, encrypted location, etc).
- Fixed: In Notification dialog the text (Yes, No, Not valid) under Signed property is not localized.
- Removed: The x button from text boxes that is clearing their content.
Changes in v6.3.0:
- Improved: Detecting invalid rules is now made at service level instead of UI level, meaning that the rules defined for files that are not accessible are not detected anymore as invalid.
- Fixed: Connections Log loading time increased after last update if Security log contains older entries for processes that are not running anymore.
Download: Windows Firewall Control 6.3.0 | 2.7 MB (Freeware)
View: Windows Firewall Control Website