You are here Home » Tech » Can I Run Two Firewalls at the Same Time in My Computer [Answered and Resolved]

Can I Run Two Firewalls at the Same Time in My Computer [Answered and Resolved]

by Fahad Saleem

A lot of users have asked if they can use and run two firewalls at the same time in their computer. The basic reason of the question is that there are many conflicts that are caused due to two firewalls at the same time. For example, if you have installed Norton antivirus in Windows computer, it could cause a conflict if you didn’t disable Windows antivirus or firewall.

Always Prefer a Hard Firewall With a Normal Firewall

There is a wide opinion that running multiple firewalls at the same time won’t increase the security, and many system files and programs would cause a problem due to excessive blockages and file conflicts. I recommend you use a hardware firewall in the router to beef up your security. For example, Zonealarm’s firewall is one of the most famous hard router firewalls that could protect and mask all your ports and make your information and data secure.

How You Can Use Two Firewalls at the Same Time

Another great solution is to run a firewall and an antivirus at the same time. If you have a highly sensitive information in your computer, it is always recommended to ramp up your security as much as you can. For example, a user says that he managed to avoid a hack attack on his sensitive payments information because he had installed an antivirus software, enabled Windows firewall, defender and many other web-based blockers.

Two Sides of the Picture

There are, however, various advantages and disadvantages of using two or more firewalls at the same time. If in a topology, one firewall is used both for LAN and WAN, a DDoS attack could take down the network as firewalls are much more vulnerable for the Denial of Service attacks than any other security measure.

But having two firewalls could take a toll on administrative complexity as there will be two different administrative policies for the firewalls. A solution to this issue to only apply the firewall to ingress traffic. This would simplify the firewall system. Making separate rules for two firewalls will also make things easy and efficient. If the attack breaches the first rule-set, the second protocol will be up for defending.

What Should You Choose

Running two firewalls is not recommended by most of the security experts due to severe crashes and internal system collisions. If you are a normal end user who uses computer for a normal usage like office work, programming, social media usage and entertainment, I would say choosing one good firewall or antivirus program is more than enough.

You may also like