Cisco: ESW-524 Switch Not Allowing Data/Voice Through The Network

This is a real pain, but I suppose Cisco would call this a 'feature'.  Im not a big fan of this switch, but its a low cost answer for POE and Layer 2 switching (although not too powerful).  I have had twice before communications stop (once) and work, then stop (once) because there is this thing called "port security".
So what I think this does is that it is to keep many devices from behind one port from being a problem.  That doesnt sound right.  I mean, it keeps you from adding a switch that has multiple devices riding on it.  Im not sure that sounds right.  One more try: I think it is to limit the amount of mac-addresses you can have behind your ESW-524 ports to prevent unwanted devices from being able to get on.  In both scenarios, I had to go to the port security page (see below) and select "forward" instead of the default "discard".  Once I did this, I was able to get the network back up in both cases.  See below where to go to change this.  Im thinking Cisco should not do this by default.  I guess its like a Microsoft feature.  They know better than you do, which is really annoying!