The Control Center (settings) application does not currently have any options for configuring any network security. Privacy and security is becoming more important, and not only for tech-savvy people but for everyone. I feel it is important to provide options for this with a good explanation of what the behaviour is so that anyone could understand what the setting means.
The “Privacy & Security” page currently shows a list of different settings categorised in “System” and “Devices”. I believe it would make sense to add a “Network” submenu to “System”. This would launch a page that shows some basic network security features at first, but could contain more settings in the future.
I recently learned that MacOS has a toggle in its settings application called “stealth mode” which disables answering ping requests and adds a barrier to nmapping a machine. This could be a great first setting to be added to this page.
I am aware that adding to the UI is a hard process, as it should be, but adding the setting in this way would follow the design guidelines, and it would be easily digestable for a user who opens the privacy and security settings for the first time. The alternative would be to add these settings to the “Network” page, but I believe that this page is meant for the current network settings, adding to them, etc. Furthermore, I could very well see that more important privacy and security settings would need to be added in the future, some of which might not make sense at all to put under the “Network” page.