Patent ID: 7237258

Claim:
A method for summarizing firewall activity, comprising: (a) organizing a plurality of types of events associated with a firewall of a local computer into a plurality of categories; (b) tracking a number of occurrences of each type of event utilizing the firewall; and (c) displaying a graphical representation indicating a severity of the number of the events utilizing the firewall, wherein the graphical representation includes a graph; wherein a selector is displayed for setting a blocking level of the firewall to a desired blocking level; wherein a plurality of interface features are displayed including a summary interface, an Internet protocol (IP) address interface, an event log, and a notification option interface, wherein: upon the selection of the summary interface, displaying a recent activity list including total blocked access attempts by remote computers, upon the selection of the IP address interface, displaying the IP address interface for selecting the IP addresses associated with the remote computers to be blocked, upon the selection of the event log, displaying a log of the blocked access attempts by the remote computers, and upon the selection of the notification option interface, displaying a plurality of notification options for selection; wherein a lock-down option is provided for selectively blocking all access attempts via an interface; wherein a user is capable of performing a visual trace; wherein the user is capable of selectively blocking Internet control message protocol (ICMP) traffic; wherein the user is capable of selecting the IP addresses associated with the remote computers to be allowed access; wherein the user is capable of selecting a list of application programs to be allowed to communicate over a network.