"Inline" hardware firewall

Looking for a portable hardware firewall

[MatthewHSE]

I have a friend who uses her laptop in a portion of the world known for poor network security. After talking to her about it, I believe a hardware firewall would solve some of her problems. The Internet cafes in her part of the world are ethernet instead of wireless, so I was wondering if there's any small, hardware firewall that could sit between her computer and the network connection, or even a PCMCIA ethernet card with a built-in firewall.

Whatever she gets will have to be very simple to use - she knows almost nothing about networking and won't be able to do much configuration herself.

A few quick searches have yielded a some results, but surprisingly few reviews with the type of information I'm looking for. So I'd love to get some recommendations on what to look for or specific products.

Thanks,

Matthew

[edited by: MatthewHSE at 3:37 pm (utc) on Jan. 6, 2009]

[encyclo]

Well, a hardware firewall is really no more than a piece of hardware which is running software, so I'm not sure in this instance that your friend would gain much.

Could you expand on what specific problems she is having in terms of the "poor security"? Are we talking about viruses etc., or intercepted communications (lack of privacy)?

You could take a combination approach, assuming she's running Windows (although Linux would ge a good option!) then a decent software firewall combined with the use of a limited-privileges account (ie. not running as the machine's Administrator) and an alternative browser and mail client can go a long way to avoid the virus issue.

As for the network itself being insecure (keylogging and MITM interception of communications), a firewall won't help. You would need to look at encrypted email (enigmail or PGP for example), and the use of a ssh tunnel out to a secure machine for web-browsing (which is not easy for the someone who is not technically-minded).

[MatthewHSE]

To tell the truth I'm not exactly sure what her problems are. I know she can keep her computer clean here in the States, but it's constantly getting infected when she's overseas (she does missions work in parts of the world known for hacking activity). She's not technically-minded herself, but from the questions I've asked, it sounds like at least some of her problems are from viruses propagating over the networks she connects to the Internet from.

The reason I wanted to get her a hardware firewall is because there would be no easy way for her to add exceptions to it - she's a intelligent, but she doesn't have the technical skills to know when to allow something through the firewall. So I wanted a hardware device for her to connect through, figuring that would help with at least some of the security problems she's having.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out a good way to troubleshoot without hopping on a plane and heading to Australia. So at the moment I'm recommending every security measure I think she can implement, and a firewall was part of the package.