awesome-windows-domain-hardening VS pfSense

Build a windows domain and join your personal devices to it. Learn how to secure it. https://github.com/PaulSec/awesome-windows-domain-hardening. Most enterprises run some form of active directory. If your end goal is pentesting this is really important knowledge to have.

Hardening Windows Hosts and a Windows Domain if you have one: https://github.com/PaulSec/awesome-windows-domain-hardening. Some notable points in here is you can run Applocker on an unlicensed Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows Server host. This is essentially application whitelisting. Only approved software will run. Using Microsoft Security Baselines. Basically secure group policy settings for your Windows hosts. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-security-baselines/bg-p/Microsoft-Security-Baselines

If you're interested in security at all, you can create group policies for some or all of these. https://github.com/PaulSec/awesome-windows-domain-hardening

If you have a Windows domain at home, this resource might be useful: https://github.com/PaulSec/awesome-windows-domain-hardening It covers mitigations for common pentesting tools/techniques.

One option is Firewalla Gold Plus, or you could buy a mini PC like it and run pfSense/OPNsense yourself.

Download and install pfsense as a virtual machine or partition: https://www.pfsense.org Configure it with the rules you want: https://youtu.be/VAGFGppSt74 Play with it, but be careful because it will block all traffic unless you check everything properly.

Another option is Firewalla, or buy a mini PC like it and run pfSense/OPNsense yourself. Two similar concepts, with the cost being either money or your DIY time. A lot of Firewalla users say that it's much easier for home use than pfSense/OPNsense, so you might find it worthwhile to spend a little more on it upfront and have to tinker less.

If you want firewall, I think you can use https://www.pfsense.org/ or https://opnsense.org/ , maybe running on an old PC or a Raspberry Pi. Not sure.

I've recently started using OPNsense. It's similar to pfSense, but seems to be considered a little more user-friendly.

For most router issues, I recommend people always put them in to dumb bridge mode and put a proper firewall like pfsense or opnsense as your gateway.

I have found that my historical average packet loss is about 0.02%. Something distinctly changed around 4/20 of this year, and now the average packet loss has gone up to 0.05% with spikes even higher, associated with periods of elevated ping times. It rarely did that before. Typically the IPv6 stack has more problems than v4 (especially an incident of packet loss on 4/28), and neither has been trouble-free since I started service in early 2020. My data comes from a pfSense installation.

I have done this using the Pfsense