Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a highly sophisticated, configurable firewall that protects your web applications from malicious attacks. Equipped with a comprehensive suite of protective features, WAF sits between external consumers and web applications, safeguarding critical business data from a host of potential threats.

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What is it?

What is Web Application Firewall (WAF)?

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a security tool that monitors and filters HTTP and HTTPS traffic between a web application and the internet. Designed to block threats such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other web-based attacks, it acts as a protective layer at the application level, helping to ensure that only legitimate traffic reaches the application while providing customisable security policies for enhanced protection.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Features

Amongst many other functions, WAF provides:

Web Application Security: Web application security provides complete security for web-based applications from the OWASP (Open Web
Application Security Project) Top 10 and many other threats.
API Protection: Web Application Firewall integrates out of the box policies together with an automatically generated positive security model policy based on your schema specification to protect against API exploits.
Bot Mitigation: WAF protects against automated bots, webs scrapers, crawlers, data harvesting, credential stuffing and other automated attacks to protect your web assets, mobile APIs, applications, users and sensitive data.
CAPTCHA Challenge: You can configure WAF to run CAPTCHA challenge against web requests that match your rule's inspection criteria. CAPTCHA puzzles prove that a human being is sending the request.
Layer 7 Load Balancing: Layer 7 load balancers route traffic to designated endpoints using data from HTTP/HTTPS requests, enhancing endpoint security against DDoS attacks by concealing IP addresses. They also facilitate quicker failover and precise routing, compared to DNS-only caching.

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Service Definition

Benefits

Web Application Firewall benefits

Comprehensive security for your entire connected network.

: Web Application Firewall carries a wide range of functions which has the potential to become complex, particularly in larger organisations. We'll work with you to configure a unique set of policies, and evolve them over time in a structured fashion.
: As part of your managed service, Cloud Gateway become the custodians of your WAF policy, but you have full control over the rules you want to set for your organisation.
: New rules or amendments to policy can be deployed rapidly via a ticket in the My Cloud Gateway portal.
: Mix and match your WAF functionality with Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) and Secure Web Gateway (SWG), as part of a comprehensive network security posture.
: My Cloud Gateway allows you to review and edit security rules. See all your security events and top threats via a simple, intuitive display. You can raise support tickets and run reports too!

Why choose Cloud Gateway as your for your Web Application Firewall Services?

At Cloud Gateway we offer top-tier Web Application Firewall (WAF) services, providing robust application security with superior performance.

Our WAF solutions protect your web applications from common exploits, ensuring optimal availability and resource usage. Easy to deploy and manage, our solutions provide real-time security visibility.

With customisable security rules and threat intelligence, we adapt to evolving threats and guard against sophisticated attacks.

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Web Application Firewall FAQs

Answering your FAQs about WAF

: Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and traditional firewalls serve distinct purposes. WAFs deliver targeted protection for web applications by targeting Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) traffic. Whereas, firewalls focus on overall network security and traffic management across a wider range of traffic types.
: Both Secure Web Gateway and Web Application Firewalls enforce specific security policies, helping organisations protect themselves from cyber threats and data breaches, whilst complying with regulatory requirements.
However, their purposes are quite different. A Secure Web Gateway (SWG) is designed to eliminate unwanted software and internet traffic to ensure adherence to corporate and regulatory policies. A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is dedicated to safeguarding web applications from attacks through the filtration and monitoring of HTTP traffic.
: Web Application Firewalls (WAF) serve as a protective barrier between the internet and your API server, scrutinising incoming requests to thwart malicious traffic.
Conversely, an API Gateway acts as an intermediary between your API server and clients, overseeing access control, traffic direction, and usage restrictions. Although open-source API gateways can offer comprehensive default security features, emerging threats necessitate a more comprehensive defence approach. Augmenting your security posture with a specialised Web Application Firewall (WAF) establishes a robust multi-tiered protection framework.
: Network firewalls and Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) offer different layers of protection against various threats, working in tandem to fortify cybersecurity defences.
While network firewalls safeguard against attacks at Layers 3 and 4, WAFs concentrate on Layer 7 vulnerabilities, particularly web-based threats. Without a WAF, businesses could still remain vulnerable to web application attacks.
WAFs and Network firewalls should be treated as complementary solutions to protect against security risks across your network infrastructure.
: A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a crucial component in protecting web applications against DDoS attacks.
By implementing rate limiting measures, the WAF effectively mitigates the risk of server overload caused by excessive requests from malicious actors.
Leveraging detection methods such as signature analysis, geolocation tracking, and IP blacklisting, the WAF is able to recognise and block familiar DDoS attack patterns.
Furthermore, the WAF continuously adjusts its defence strategies to counter evolving threats, ensuring real-time protection against emerging DDoS attack techniques.