What is the purpose of a firewall in application deployment?

Firewalls are used to control incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules, primarily by limiting traffic to only the necessary ports for an application.

Port Filtering: Firewalls can block or allow traffic based on port numbers, thus limiting exposure to only those ports required by the application, enhancing security.

Security: This helps to protect the application from unauthorized access and potential attacks by reducing the attack surface.