Systems for providing information on network firewall host application identification and authentication include an identifying and transmitting agent on a host computer, configured to identify each application in use, tag the application identity with a host identity, combine these and other information into a data packet, and securely transmit the data packet to the network based firewall. The embodiment also includes an application identity listener on the network based firewall, configured to receive the information data packet, decode the data packet and provide to the network based firewall the identity of the application. The network based firewall is provided with an application-awareness via an extension of firewall filtering or security policy rules via the addition of a new application identity parameter upon which filtering can be based. Other systems and methods are also provided.