Windows Vista Blog

Windows Firewall: Enable Outbound Filtering

March 9th, 2007 by SysAdmin

I bet you didn’t know that Microsoft Windows Vista includes a two-way firewall.

Unfortunately, the outbound filtering has been disabled. I’m not quite sure why Microsoft made this decision but from a security point of view it would have made perfect sense to have it enabled by default. I suspect it’s due to Microsoft not wanting to frustrate customers when their internet dependent applications suddenly stopped working.

Windows Vista Firewall: How To Turn On Outbound Filtering

• Click the Start Button (Windows Orb)
• In the search bar type “wf.msc” and press the Enter key
• Click the Windows Firewall Properties link
• Change Outbound connections from Allow (default) to Block

From the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security properties you can also configure additional rules for incoming as well as outbound connections.