The Firewall component provides a scalable solution to protect your Mac from unauthorized network traffic.
The firewall comes with a stateful engine that provides flexibility in defining allowed network traffic for your Mac. You can define rules based on various traffic parameters and group them for easier management.
Here is the list of features of Firewall component:
Stateful filtering — The stateful filtering and network packet inspection validate each packet for different connections against predefined rules, holding the connection attributes in memory from beginning-to-end.
Regular mode — When the network packet adheres to a rule’s condition, the associated action defined in the rule is executed. If no matching rule is found, the network packet is blocked.
Adaptive mode — When the network packet matches a rule’s conditions, the associated action defined in the rule is executed. If no matching rule is found, the network packet is allowed and a rule is created to allow similar packets later.
Tip
Use this option only to fine tune your firewall rules.
Note
In both these modes, the status of the TCP/UDP/ICMP connection is tracked to identify whether the incoming packet is part of the existing connection.
New rules — You can create rules to manage the network traffic.