Smoothwall Express 2.0 is a huge success

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Anonymous Reader writes “Free Open Source firewall downloaded by hundreds of thousands of home users

Internet security specialist, SmoothWall Limited, today announced the latest installation figures for the popular Open Source firewall, SmoothWall Express 2.0. Since its launch in December 2003, there have been over 200,000 registered installations of SmoothWall Express 2.0, an average of 1,200 per day. In the last week 11,777 copies were installed, indicating that the worlds favourite network firewall continues to gain in popularity.

We are extremely pleased with the growing success of SmoothWall Express. It is fantastic to see an increased use of Linux in the home as well as a growing awareness of the importance of Internet security, said Lawrence Manning, co-founder of the SmoothWall Project and Development Director of SmoothWall Ltd.

Most home computer users fail to realise just how vulnerable they are to attack. As a result they do not take adequate security precautions, making them prime targets for the cyber criminal, added George Lungley, Managing Director of SmoothWall Limited. Not only do home users need to protect their personal information, they also have to guard against their computers being used for criminal purposes, such as attacking high profile targets and hosting spam email operations. Firewalls are a must have for all Internet users; SmoothWall Express is the perfect firewall solution for small home computer networks.

SmoothWall Express turns a redundant PC into a dedicated firewall, protecting the network at its perimeter, which provides more robust protection than a personal firewall running on the same computer and operating system that it is trying to protect. A perimeter firewall stops an attack before it reaches its target, blocking not only hackers but viruses like the recent Sasser worm that attack unprotected Windows systems via their network connections.

SmoothWalls ethos has always been to produce easy to use products, explained Lungley. With Express we wanted to make good Internet security available to everybody with a home computer network, regardless of whether the computers are Windows, Mac or Linux systems. Two hundred thousand people say we have been successful! Join the SmoothWall community; install SmoothWall Express on that long discarded computer, give it a second useful life, secure your home network and make the Internet a safer place for all.

SmoothWall Express is licensed under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). It is available to download free of charge from www.smoothwall.org and numerous mirror sites worldwide.

SmoothWall Ltd. financially supports the SmoothWall Open Source Project.

* Minimum hardware specification: i486SX (or compatible) processor, 32 MB RAM and a 512 MB Hard Disk Drive.

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About SmoothWall Limited

SmoothWall Ltd. is an Internet security software provider founded in 2001 to address the void in the security market between simple feature and user limited “black boxes” and “big iron” solutions from the major security vendors. With its specialist development team, SmoothWall has harnessed the technical expertise of the Open Source arena to develop a suite of firewall, virtual private network (VPN) and content filtering security solutions for education, SME and large corporate organisations.

Based in the United Kingdom, with offices in Leeds and Southampton, SmoothWall delivers global security solutions through a worldwide support network, with representation in the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, South America, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia, Germany and across Europe. With a user base spanning home users, small business and non-profit organisations through schools and universities to major corporations, hundreds of thousands of networks rely upon SmoothWall protection. For more information visit: www.smoothwall.net.

About the SmoothWall Open Source Project

The SmoothWall Open Source Project was formed in the summer of 2000 to create a simple to use firewall. Based on GNU/Linux, the team created a lightweight, hardened system that was quick to download and easy to install and administer. Almost immediately became extremely popular and the SmoothWall Project grew to become one of the major Open Source projects. For more information visit: www.smoothwall.org.”