A method, system, apparatus, and computer program product are presented
for a distributed port firewall system. The distributed port firewall
system provides mapping of port usage to application needs, application
action object (AAO) used to identify the use of ports. Application action
object may be opened based on endpoint and user. Port firewall
"properties" are added in order to configure firewall which are only
configurable by certain trusted users or applications. Different policies
applied to usage and the opening of ports based on both a collection of
endpoints, managed regions, or on a per endpoint basis. Beyond just
allowing an application to open a port, the allowed packet types are also
configured to work in conjunction with a distributed packet snooper
session.