Application firewall

An application firewall is a form of firewall that controls input, output, and/or access from, to, or by an application or service. It operates by monitoring and potentially blocking the input, output, or system service calls that do not meet the configured policy of the firewall. The application firewall is typically built to control all network traffic on any OSI layer up to the application layer. It is able to control applications or services specifically, unlike a stateful network firewall, which is - without additional software - unable to control network traffic regarding a specific application. There are two primary categories of application firewalls, network-based application firewalls and host-based application firewalls.

A network-based application layer firewall is a computer networking firewall operating at the application layer of a , and is also known as a proxy-based or reverse-proxy firewall. Application firewalls specific to a particular kind of network traffic may be titled with the service name, such as a web application firewall. They may be implemented through software running on a host or a stand-alone piece of network hardware. Often, it is a host using various forms of proxy servers to proxy traffic before passing it on to the client or server. Because it acts on the application layer, it may inspect the contents of traffic, blocking specified content, such as certain websites, viruses, or attempts to exploit known logical flaws in client software.

Modern application firewalls may also offload encryption from servers, block application input/output from detected intrusions or malformed communication, manage or consolidate authentication, or block content that violates policies.

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