By Danny, IT-Observer Staff
Tuesday, 27 September 2005 15:03 EST

Spywall is a Windows-based sandbox and firewall tool designed to protect Internet users from attacks that can be launched through their web browser. By sandboxing the web browser, Spywall ensures full protection from unauthorized access to the user's computer.

The integration of Spywall into the web-browser and its multilayer defense strategy enables it efficiently controlling the browser behavior to keep spyware out, phishing attacks and block other web-based vulnerability exploitation.

Spywall is presented with a wide-ranging set of options, from a basic trusted-sites list to more complex DLL injection and objects loading monitoring - all enable users to proactively protect their computer from unwanted malicious code.

An object and plug-ins manager provides some insight into objects that are loaded when the browser starts, with options to prompt about any new object the browser attempts to load and block known spyware objects.

Also thrown in is a web browser process manager, which allows users to control of what processes can be started from the web browser. Launching other processes is the preferred method used by spyware to install itself on user's computer.

More sophisticated features are DLL usage monitor that examines which DLLs are loaded by the web browser, and a file system access monitor that can limit access to file systems that the web browser is allowed.

There are also very handy tools for creating trusted-lists of web-login pages, lock browser default configuration, monitor startup programs, scanning and cleaning up existing spyware and generate reports on web usage.

For enterprise environments, the software lets network administrators to install and manage client policy from a central location.

Most of what the product offers can be accomplished using standalone tools, but its unique approach to prevent spyware guarantees users a high level of protection against browser-based attacks, and provides an enhancement to network firewalls that cannot block this type of attacks.

If you want to deploy a cost-effective spyware protection solution that will block malicious code that your firewall cannot handle with, Spywall is worth checking out.