A couple weeks ago, I listened to an episode of Security Now! that was an interview with Mark Maiffret of eEye. In this show, he talked about his company, which specializes in security research. eEye is one of those handful of companies that work hard to find software vulnerabilities in software and often find and report security issues to Microsoft and other companies. eEye's clients include high-security areas of the government and many other security-conscious persons.

He talked about the functionality of their software, which includes not only an Internet Firewall, but a System Firewall and an Application Firewall. These increased levels of security make sure malware and spyware cannot do their job and that no applications can easily modify core Windows settings. Maiffret also talked about how their Internet-updated systems protect specifically against known vulnerabilities, including the ones they have found but have not yet fully released to the public. He also noted that the system is locked down with their software so well that almost any new vulnerability is blocked on a number of levels throughout the system.

Sounds great, but it's probably only available to high-paying users, right? Not true. eEye, in an effort to serve their enterprise customers a bit more, decided to give a personal, home version for free for a whole year. I've tried out their Blink product for a couple weeks, and it was nice. I did have some issues with installation and keeping Blink running, because a couple times I had to restart my computer. Overall, it notified you just as much as a firewall but protected you so much more.

In the end, I uninstalled it. Software such as Joost and GTA: San Andreas, apparently, have some compatibility problems with eEye's Blink. Plus, I found a bit of a performance slowdown when the software was running. Still, I think that if you're looking for a high-grade security implementation that includes firewall, anti-virus, and so much more, go get your free year for home users. (Even after that it's comparable to Symantec, I think.) It's great if you use the usual MS Office, Internet, and such applications, but will probably have some issues with games and other cutting-edge applications that want to do sneaky things in Windows to get better performance. This is the program for the ultimate security freak or just the cautious web user.