Firewall and network protection in Windows Security

Firewall & network protection in Windows Security lets you view the status of Windows Defender Firewall and see what networks your device is connected to. A firewall helps to control what traffic is allowed into, or out of, your network or device. Ideally a firewall only allows in traffic that you've requested, or that you've decided to allow because you're providing a service on the machine or network in question.

For example a web server would want to allow in requests for the content it's supposed to be serving; but might not allow in traffic from a remote control application.

For your personal computer you're probably not hosting any public services, so your firewall should probably be blocking all unsolicited inbound traffic.

You can turn Windows Defender Firewall on or off, and access advanced Windows Defender Firewall options, for the following network types:

• Domain (workplace) networks

• Private (discoverable) networks

• Public (non-discoverable) networks

Select the network you want to turn the firewall on, or off, for and then set the slider to what you want.