You do not need any 3rd party firewall software.
By default windows firewall functions as follows:
- Inbound - Block all unless in the list (Whitelist)
- Outbound - Allow all unless in the list (Blacklist)
You want to Block all Inbound and all Outbound connections by default.
You can do this using Windows built-in Firewall. The way to do this (though somewhat hidden away way) is to change the settings as follows in these 3 easy steps:Go to: Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Firewall
There, right-click as shown in screen shot to get the properties:
Change Outbound Connections to Block for each profile Now you can add only the programs you want to the list.
You can import/export rules by right clicking the same as in screenshot above and selecting Export Policy. It imports/exports the whole thing. So you can experiment, disabling rules and making your machine more secure. For example my settings are as follows (excluding my programs):
Inbound - there's not a single rule here!
Outbound - only "Core Networking - DNS (UDP-Out)" is enabled
If you're using OpenVPN you will also need to add two more Outbound rules:
Core Networking - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP-Out)
and a rule to allow openvpn.exe
