Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

A firewall is a service that controls the traffic flowing through it, allowing only authorized traffic to traverse and keeping out the bad people. Why the addition of Advanced Security to the title? With Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, you not only configure the firewall via the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security MMC snap-in, you also use Internet Protocol Security (IPsec), although the older Policy and Monitor snap-ins are still included to manage older client computers, such as Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. The firewall is enabled by default on a new installation, providing protection from the point of OS installation in a locked-down state. For upgraded OSs, the firewall state is maintained from the previous OS, so if the firewall was disabled in Windows Server 2003, the firewall is still disabled after an upgrade to Windows Server 2008.