Patrick,

I recommend that you visit Steve (SpinRite) Gibson's "Shields Up" page by
first going to www.grc.com

Test your shields... I thought I had things locked down tight only to find
problems with port 139.  There is an excellent discussion of personal
firewall software...don't miss the eye-opening remarks about some programs
out now that are WORSE than nothing at all:
http://grc.com/su-evilportmon.htm

He highly recommends the one program (ZoneAlarm 2.0) that is FREE and has
some very critical remarks about a few $others$ we have all heard of:
http://grc.com/su-firewalls.htm

I also find it helpful to monitor several USENET feeds at:

alt.computer.security
comp.security.firewalls

HTH,
Anthony

>2) What is the best type of security program out there to keep
> out unwanted intruders(hackers and the like), but will still
> allow for an FTP server to run.

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