If you don’t want to get a virus on your Windows 8 Developer PC, you might want to consider installing an antivirus and a firewall on Windows 8. But are there any that work yet?

Many Firewalls and Anti-Viruses Currently Unsupported

We have tested the Agnitum Outpost Pro Firewall and AVG Internet Security 2012.

Both Agnitum’s Firewall and AVG are currently not compatible with Windows 8. The installation of AVG fails with an error:

And the Outpost firewall can cause data corruption and blue screens and is therefore not recommended.

Protect Windows 8 With Spyware Scanner and Inbound/Outbound Rules

What we recommended to keep your Windows 8 PC clean is to install tools that only scan your Windows 8 PC. E.g. Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware which works great on Windows 8 and is one of the most effective ways to get rid of spyware on Windows 8. The professional version includes a proactive scanning system that can help you to protect yourself from active threats and visiting malware sites.

On our list of the top 5 spyware scanner for Windows 7 you will find

• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• Sypbot Search and Destroy
• SUPERAntiSpyware
• Lavasoft’s Adaware
• Windows Defender

All of these tools only provide minimal protection to port scans and other network attacks, so it is crucial that you keep the built-in Windows 8 firewall active and add some inbound/outbound rules

If you installed some programs that you do not want to allow incoming or outgoing traffic for, you can simply add some rules to the Windows 8 firewall that will give you basic protection. For example if you want to run Apache locally you could block outbound traffic for port 80.

While the Windows 8 firewall is not the best solution it can give you a rudimentary protection.

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