A Short History of Macintosh Firewalls


Open Door Networks shipped the first Macintosh firewall (for Mac OS 8.1) in 1998. With the DoorStop X Firewall and the DoorStop X Security Suite, Open Door has gotten back into the business that it helped get started.

Macintosh firewall timeline

Firewall timeline

1998: Open Door works with Apple to add "TCP Filter" capabilities to AppleShare IP 6.1
1998: Open Door announces and ships DoorStop 1.0 for Mac OS 8.1 and later
1999: Open Door ships Security Suites for AppleShare IP and WebSTAR
1999: Open Door ships DoorStop Personal Edition 1.0
2000: Open Door ships DoorStop Personal Edition 2.0, adds UDP, basic log analysis
2000: DoorStop Personal provided free to all EarthLink DSL Mac users
2000: Open Door licenses DoorStop technology to Symantec. Companies work together on Norton Personal Firewall.
2001: Open Door ships Who's There? Firewall Advisor 1.0
2001: "Internet Security for Your Macintosh: A Guide for the Rest of Us"
2002: Symantec licenses Who's There? for inclusion with Norton Internet Security
2002: Apple adds "built-in" firewall to Mac OS X (Jaguar)
2005: Apple adds limited logging to "built-in" firewall in Mac OS X (Tiger)
2005: Open Door ships the DoorStop X Firewall for Mac OS X 10.3 and later
2006: Open Door ships the DoorStop X Security Suite, including Who's There? 2.0 and "Internet Security for Your Macintosh," second edition


Copyright (C) 2000-2007, Open Door Networks, Inc. Who's There? Firewall Advisor and DoorStop are trademarks of Open Door Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are owned by their respective companies.