[SOLVED] Don't understand ZyxelUSG40 and I have some Qs

[madne$$]

Hi Members,

Thanks for taking the time to read my question and answering it with the best you can.
Going through my Grandads old boxes he had an ZYXEL USG40 lying around which he was planning to set up but lost his wife and decided to retire. Anyways he gave it to me and said I don't really need it anymore.

I don't know much about Zyxel products but I was curious if I set it up at home on a single PC could I protect myself from attacks and viruses?

I wasn't to sure if this product was only for networking protecting?
Would the Anti Virus, ADP protection work whilst browsing the internet?

I know this product has a licence fee but if they added an additional line of defence I am willing to add this to my Software Internet Security Suit.

The Firewall built into USG would that protect against internet threats also?

Thanks for taking the time to read and answer my Questions, I really do appreciate it.

Regards,
Madne$$

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Plenty of negative reviews on that product on line.

 

[madne$$]

Plenty of negative reviews on that product on line.

In terms of protecting a PC?
I have done loads of research and setting up is difficult lol but wasn't sure if it would protect a Single PC behind a Router.

I am using an Internet Security Suite Paid, just wanted extra protection.
The other Solution was Bitdefender Box 2 have that sitting behind the Router whilst still having an Internet Security Suite.

Thanks for replying regardless

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Virtually every negative review concerns the difficulty in settting up. If you don't dot every single 'i' and cross every single 't' then you will be more vulnerable than just using a consumer level router/firewall. I personally wouldn't go near one of those.

 

[madne$$]

Thanks for your input on this matter.
Whats your thoughts on using the Bitdefender Box 2.

Smart Home

Secure your Internet-connected home and family devices with advanced IoT solutions from Bitdefender Smart Home Cybersecurity.

www.bitdefender.com

Yeah I couldnt find one simple easy setup process, I set up NAT following Youtube video.
Other then that I haven't played around that much.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Don't know that one. I personally build my own firewalls using IPCop.

 

[bill001g]

What is your goal to prevent.

Simple NAT provided by even the cheapest router prevents any unknown incoming traffic from the internet. When the router gets this traffic it does not know which of your internal machine to send it to so it just discards this.

This is pretty much the fundamental rule in a firewall so the cheap router is doing most the function of a high dollar firewall.

Next any attempt to inspect or limit traffic coming from internal machines is mostly worthless. Many of these devices claim content filter and stuff like deep packet inspection. This is either a outright lie or they are basing it on very old technology. All data from internal machines has been encrypted with HTTPS for many years and it is impossible to see anything other than maybe the IP addresses and those mean very little now with all the virtual hosting going on. Even the DNS queries that some device used to spy on data has been recently closed by many browsers and will "soon" be a standard feature in windows.

So what feature do you think you can use that is worth the effort. A firewall generally is used to protect a server that you have intentionally exposed to the internet. Some firewall can help prevent certain attacks against servers but even these are not as fancy as they used to be because the data is still encrypted

 

[SamirD]

The Zyxel USG40 was a pretty decent small business router. I was looking at the USG50 for our use, but it was pretty expensive at the time.

It's decently powerful as it can route about 400Mbps wan-to-lan according to the specs, and can also handle multi-wan as the optional port can be used for a second Internet connection. It can also do vlans, ipsec vpn tunnels, and more advanced features.

Since you have it, I would connect it up to a single computer and play with it. You can do a lot of reading on the USG series on the zyxel forum here:
https://businessforum.zyxel.com/categories/security-zywall-usg-series

One thing the USG40 can do that help tremendously with security is built-in geofencing. Geofencing is completely blocking packets that come from the countries you designate (like all those chinese and russians):
https://businessforum.zyxel.com/discussion/4445/geofencing-on-usg40

Now, a lot of the hackers out there also spoof their source or actually take over a point inside the fence (compromised system in the US for example), so it won't completely remove the threat, but definitely reduces the vector.