Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) Practice Exam

Deploying Azure Firewall in an Azure environment primarily serves the purpose of filtering traffic between different network segments, such as subnets, based on defined security rules. This means that Azure Firewall acts as a robust security layer, controlling the flow of traffic and ensuring that only authorized communication occurs between resources within the cloud environment.

By leveraging these filtering capabilities, organizations can create rules that allow or deny traffic based on numerous parameters, including source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols. This enhances the security posture of the Azure environment by mitigating risks associated with unauthorized access and potential threats.

The other options either address unrelated capabilities or functions that aren't the primary focus of a firewall solution. For instance, antivirus protection is generally handled by other security mechanisms rather than a firewall. Similarly, managing user access and permissions is typically the role of identity management systems rather than firewall functions. Optimizing application performance is more associated with network performance features and Azure services designed for load balancing and caching. Thus, the focus of Azure Firewall is rightly centered on traffic filtering and security enforcement.