Firewalls can be viewed as gated borders or gateways that manage the travel of permitted and prohibited web activity in a private network. The term comes from the concept of physical walls being barriers to slow the spread of fire until emergency services can extinguish it. Comparably, network security firewalls are for web traffic management — typically intended to slow the spread of web threats.

Firewalls create 'choke points' to funnel web traffic, at which they are then reviewed on a set of programmed parameters and acted upon accordingly. Some firewalls also track the traffic and connections in audit logs to reference what has been allowed or blocked.

Firewalls are typically used to gate the borders of a private network or its host devices. As such, firewalls are one security tool in the broader category of user access control. These barriers are typically set up in two locations — on dedicated computers on the network or the user computers and other endpoints themselves (hosts).

How to Enable Microsoft Firewall on Windows 8 & 10

Click Start or go to the Windows Start Screen.

Type Settings and press Enter or click the Gear Settings icon.

In the Settings window, click the Update & Security option.

In the left navigation menu, click Windows Security.

Under Protection areas, click Firewall & network protection.

In the Windows Security window, click the Turn on button for the Domain network, Private network, or Public network, depending on which firewall profile you want to enable.

To turn on Windows Defender Firewall for all three network profiles, repeat step 6 above for each network profile.

How to Disable Microsoft Firewall on Windows 8 & 10

In the Windows Security window, click Domain network, Private network, or Public network, depending on which firewall profile you want to disable.

Under the Microsoft Defender Firewall heading, click the toggle to the Off position.

To turn off Windows Defender Firewall for all three network profiles, repeat steps 6 and 7 above for each network profile.

Mac’s Firewall settings can be found in the Security and Privacy preference in System Preferences.

To enable Firewall in macOS and OS X v10.6 or later:

Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy.

Click on the lock icon in the bottom left corner of the window and enter your administrator password.

Click Turn On Firewall (or Start in OS X).

In v10.5 of OS X, Firewall is enabled slightly differently:

Turning off the Firewall is simply a case of following the same instructions as above and clicking on the Turn Off Firewall button.

To do this, you may need to enter your administrator password.

By clicking on the Firewall Options button (or Advanced for OS X) you’ll find additional settings that give you more control over how the Firewall performs.

In the list, you’ll see all of the apps that are currently allowed to send and receive network traffic. By clicking on the application to highlight it and hitting the "-" button, you can remove an app from the list. Alternatively, clicking on the "+" button lets you add a new app to the list.

You’ll also be presented with three options:

Block all incoming connections — this blocks all connections other than those required for basic internet services.

Automatically allow signed software to receive incoming connections — this automatically allows software signed with a valid certificate to gain access to the network for sending and receiving traffic.

Enable stealth mode — this prevents Mac from responding to probing requests.

Check the boxes for any settings you'd like to enable and hit OK to confirm.

Today we'll know how to enable and disable Firewall on Windows 8, 10 & Mac.

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