A network-connected application should not be supposed completely safe if it can be connected from and to any point of a network and/or the internet. Only rare the applications are to be allowed to connect to anywhere. A web browser should not be limited to connect the internet in ordinary circumstances. However, there are situations in which even the web browser should be limited in its connection ability (parental control etc).
Usually the applications are to be limited in its connection abilities to increase the security. If you have decided to share your disks (for example), the sharing hardly has to be provided to all over the world. Probably you would like to share your disks with trusted persons or trusted networks only. Windows 7 Firewall Control is the utility to simplify application network access management and to provide the application network security.
Application security is provided by setting an appropriate set of network access rules (or security zone), determining which network connections are to be allowed or rejected separately for each application. The network access rule is a named set of parameters describing a network connection (IP address or address range, port number etc) The rules are united under a unique name in zones. The zones then are applied by its name, setting correspondent set of the rules at once, simplifying the network access management. Windows 7 Firewall Control provides suitable procedure for group zone and/or rule management on zone/rule name basis.
Windows 7 Firewall Control - 64bit software