According to CNET, Window's release of Vista early next year will have an updated firewall that looks at incoming and outgoing traffic. This updated firewall checks outgoing traffic in contrast to XP service pack 2, which only checks incoming traffic. But the default on the firewall in Vista will be set to block incoming traffic only, Microsoft said. The protection will be curbed in order to make life easier for the company's enterprise customers.

"Because the nature of an outbound firewall is to restrict the traffic sent to specific ports, the outgoing access in the Windows Vista firewall is open by default," a representative for the software maker told ZDNet Australia. "The reason for this is Microsoft has received strong feedback from its customers, especially from large organizations and government departments, saying that they would like to manage this feature from an administrator level."  Configuring the Vista firewall to stop outgoing connections made by rogue applications and malicious software will require a varying degree of technical knowledge, depending on each user's security requirements, Microsoft said.