The inventive communications management systems manage access to a local area network or network content by external users, applications, and devices. The systems and methods are implemented on a network appliance to manage content within the network and facilitate content transmission through a firewall that separates the network from a larger networking environment, such as the World Wide Web. Other applications operating on the network appliance are made firewall aware so that existing network appliance identity schemes can be used to also control gate access to and from the network, to and from applications that run on the network appliance, and to and from other applications that run on the local network. Because the firewall is integrated closely with other application on the network appliance, after the external user is granted access to the network, network applications can control and terminate access through the firewall as desired.