RSSSunbelt Saves Kerio Personal Firewall
By Nate Mook | Published December 1, 2005, 3:18 PM
Sunbelt Software, maker of a number of security and anti-spyware applications, has saved the day by acquiring Kerio Personal Firewall, which was due to be discontinued at the end of the year. Sunbelt says it will continue to offer a free version of the firewall for home users.
Initially, the product will be re-branded as "Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall," and support will continue for all existing customers. The full version of KPF will be offered at reduced pricing and both Sunbelt and Kerio customers will receive special offers, the company said.
Kerio says it is moving out of the desktop market and focusing on software for small businesses. The company currently offers Kerio MailServer and Kerio WinRoute Firewall in that space.
"I am, frankly, thrilled with this acquisition. I've used all the big name firewalls, and this is my personal favorite. I'm not knocking the others, as there are some outstanding firewalls out there (ZA and Agnitum come to mind). I just really like how it operates," wrote Sunbelt President Alex Eckelberry on the Sunbelt Blog.
"It's straightforward, very effective and also has cool features like ad blocking and intrusion prevention."
Sunbelt expects to complete the purchase by the end of the month. In the meantime, Kerio will continue to offer KPF on its Web site. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Sunbelt customers will also get the opportunity to buy the Kerio Firewall at a discount and we'll also be offering Sunbelt products to Kerio users at a discount," Eckelberry added.
The news from Sunbelt comes days after Symantec disclosed it was scrapping the free Sygate Personal Firewall, as well as the paid Pro version. Symantec is instead offering users a discounted upgrade to Norton Personal Firewall, which runs $37.49 USD.
This is excellent news. I agree completely with Mr. Eckelberry's evaluation of KPF, and I fully intended to go on using it until Windows Vista takes over (KPF will not run under Vista Beta 1).
Now I can look forward to continue using it with Vista, hopefully even in 64-bit mode.
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|this is one of thoes peices of software that I will no shed a tear over .. and it should have been banished to open source, freeware
I use Outpost Firewall and Kav Antivirus
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|It’s a personal thing. Kerio works for some and not for others, so there’s no reason to banish it, just because you and some others don’t like it, because so many do. I use Outpost Pro too, and though I’m mostly pleased with it, the latest version (3.0) is not without its problems. If a couple of annoying bugs aren’t worked out in the next release, I may look elsewhere and Kerio could be my choice.
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|Interesting Newsletter from Sunbelt..
"Spyware VS. CounterSpy
CounterSpy Now Decloaks The Sony Rootkit
CounterSpy has just released a new definition set of CounterSpy that decloaks the Sony rootkit. By decloaking we mean that we get rid of the driver called (Aries.sys) that gives the Sony DRM (Digital Rights Management) its hidden rootkit capabilities. This is the same thing that Windows Antispyware is doing. However, it does not remove the Sony DRM files themselves, as doing so can wreak havoc on your computer by causing the CD drive to become inoperable. Sophos and other antispyware developers also just do a decloaking.
We are unaware of any utility that actually removes these DRM files (not just the decloaking thing) due to the danger mentioned above. Microsoft has announced that their Malicious Software Removal tool will remove it, but we suspect it will also just decloak it as well. Sony provides no way for their DRM files to be removed through Add/Remove programs. Instead, one has to go to their website to do a full uninstall or go through a cumbersome manual uninstall. CounterSpy 1.0: Definition 256 is the set that decloaks the rootkit. "
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|OH just use Trend Micro :)
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|Well done, Sunbelt! +1
I do hope that you will do something with Kerio PF 4.x, because it is barely usable (and therefore I stick with Kerio PF 2.15). Thx in advance!
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|Kerio Personal Firewall 4 is too bulky. It has lots of nice features, but the interface is in memory all the time, and it starts fairly slowly compared to 2.1.5
If they want to make it faster, they can cut out the 6mb GUI that's always in memory, in favour of the older approach of having a configuration exe. I rather enjoy the application blocking behaviour though, and I can only hope(unlikely as it is) that they give us the buffer overflow protection from the paid-for KPF.
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|I have 2GB of RAM. I can spare 6MB =)
I wouldn't call it bulky, but I guess I could understand someone else if they only have 256MB or something like that...
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|It is not the problem of RAM memory. I have 2 gigs too, and an Athlon 4200 (slightly overclocked). The problem is that Kerio PF 4.xx slows down everything if you switch eg. any BT client on. It was even confirmed by Petr Baloun, the author of the app. I think that some parts of the firewall should be completely rewritten. I do not mean from scratch, but something must be done.
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|Sunbelt ladies and gents is one of the most dedicated software companies out there. What they say they're going to do...they do. They actually do care about computer security. If they buy out a company ......it's not because they can...it's because they care and WILL make it better. I'm a avid Counterspy user and have been with them since they dropped the green flag. Kerio firewall was slowly going down hill....now looks like I'll be looking at Kerio PF once again.
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|Woo! I like companies like that! When I get some money in the future I might actually pay for their products! :D
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|Excellent news. I was going to continue using Kersio anyway, but it's great to know it will continue to be updated.
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|Yup. I was planning on sticking with the last Kerio version for a while at least, but now I know that there will be future versions too! Yay for Kerio.
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|saves sunbelt of doing a hostle takeover instead? im curious what would of been said if microsoft would of bought kerio on instead.
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|hopefully some day AOL will stop doing it to perfectly good application companies.
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|Sunbelt respectability +1
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|"Sunbelt says it will continue to offer a free version of the firewall for home users"
Very nice, thank you.
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|Very nice. Glad to see a company still interested in helping the consumer
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|Sunbelt....Thumbs-Up
Symantec should have anti-trust charges filed against them for what they did to Sygate.
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|Sweet.
I just hope they don't change it too much in their new versions. W00t for Sunbelt.
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|Sunbelt is a class act! I've always admired their company and the ethics of their president, Alex Eckelberry. Kerio Personal Firewall and Sunbelt should make an awesome combination.
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|A 'class act' is usually bad. :P
But yes, I agree this is a very good thing! =)
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|Kudos to Sunbelt for offering a life preserver. Too bad no one could have done the same for Sygate. Cor-pirate Symantec couldn't kill it off fast enough after acquiring it. Just caught this: "The full version of KPF will be offered at reduced pricing and both Sunbelt and Kerio customers will receive special offers, the company said."
Well done Sunbelt!
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|I hate Symantec and companies like them such as Creative. Buy out your competition, throw their products in the trash and then sit back and enjoy your near monopoly.
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|Creative does that?
I must have missed something.
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|Remember Aureal and their A3D API? They don't exist anymore, thanks Creative. Who really needs competition anyway.
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|Creative has done many things like what we've seen here and with the RIM/NTP suit. The first reply to your post mentioned the assassination of Aureal. Creative also led to the death of nVidia's SoundStorm tech because of their anti-competitive patent policy on hardware audio processing.
Creative has also tightened the reigns on certain parts of graphics card development, as they hold patents for some key technologies that they aren't using. Even when they did make video cards, they didn't use their own technology(!); they just bought GPUs from ATI, nVidia, and 3DFX and plopped them on cheap PCBs with a reference design layout.
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|Thanks for the education. I didn't know that.
I've been a creative fan for a couple years now - I guess I started after all of that stuff happened.
Now my loyalties are shaken =/
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