| What is Windows Firewall?
What is Windows Firewall?
Windows Firewall is a personal firewall. It was included with Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. A stringent appraisal of the packets is provided by this firewall which accepts only responses to requests initiated by the user. Consequently, this prevents foreign requests for data from entering the computer, unless especially allowed by user. Windows Firewall is generally turned on all the time by default. However, the user can turn it off manually.
History
In October 2001, the originally shipped Windows XP included a limited firewall known as Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) which was disabled by default. That was because Microsoft was unsure about its backward compatibility. Furthermore, it was barely noticed since the tweaking screens were overshadowed by network configuration screens, which never came to the attention of average users. Nearly two years later, the Blaster worm attacked lots of Windows machine, exploiting the flaws in the RPC Windows service. The Sasser worm, later on, launched similar attacks. Thanks to these worms, unpatched machines would get infected throughout the following year. Consequently, Microsoft came under fire regarding the claims that they were not proactive in protecting customers from threats. That was when Microsoft seriously thought about the sophistication of Windows XPâs built-in firewall, in terms of both functionality and interface. The re-branded it as Windows Firewall.
Windows Firewall was first officially introduced as a part of Windows XP SP2. All kinds of network connection had the firewall enabled by default with some built-in exceptions. Windows system administrators could now configure the Windows Firewall product on a company-wide level.
Microsoft incorporated some improvements to the firewall product into their server operating system with the release of Windows Server 2003 SP1. | 
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