APIs are common platform or data environment where people processes and information around the data environment. API management handles external traffics.
WAF is another category of firewall, differentiated by how specifically it filters data packets. The WAF is unique because it focuses on solely web-based attackers at the application layer. A WAF is most like a proxy firewall but with a specific focus on Layer 7 application logic.
A WAF analyzes HTTP requests and applies a set of rules that define what parts of that conversation are benign and what parts are malicious. The main parts of HTTP conversations that a WAF analyzes are GET and POST requests. GET requests retrieves data from the server, whereas POST requests are used to send data to a server to alter its state.
Prophaze
The Prophaze Cloud WAF is built natively on the Kubernetes Platform and protects clients’ Kubernetes clusters and cloud infrastructure from various attack vectors. This product secures organizations from black hackers who are trying to attack and steal data from Web Apps or Mobile App Gateways or APIs. Prophaze WAF exclusively protects web APIs from security breaches with its Behavioural-based machine learning Algorithms and Adaptive Profiling. Prophaze products can be implemented in industries where customer information is critical like Banking and Finance, E-com firms, Healthcare & Pharma, Education, Manufacturing sector, IT, and so on. This SD WAF is designed to manage Kubernetes deployments to secure web assets from bots cyber threats, attacks, misconfiguration, and patch vulnerabilities. Key features of Prophaze WAF include DDoS protection, behavioral analytics, incident management, machine learning, endpoint management, and virtual patching. The Prophaze AI firewall blocks the malicious request, new malware variants, execution of file-less attacks, zero-day attacks. It also assists organizations with DDoS prevention, API protection, bot management, account takeover, and web security.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a web infrastructure and cybersecurity company that delivers enterprise-grade WAF for protecting the internet property from SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and cross-site forgery requests. Cloudflare manages enterprises to meet the PCI compliance requirements either by conducting application vulnerability security reviews of in-scope web applications or by deploying a WAF in front of the website. Specialized CDN services from protecting companies at the network edge to remediate DDoS attacks. With a larger network size, Cloudflare provides the newest threat intelligence at scale. Cloudflare WAF automatically creates rules to mitigate the new threats on the network.Cloudflare WAF secures the enterprises against the top 10 OWASP vulnerabilities.
Akamai
Akamai is a well-established brand name with a great product. It meets and many times exceeds the needs for global content delivery and security management layer at the edge. The Akamai WAF integration allows you to manage a common set of lists for use in various Akamai security products such as Kona Site Defender, Web App Protector, and Bot Manager. Network lists are shared sets of IP addresses, CIDR blocks, or broad geographic areas. Along with managing your lists, you can also access read-only lists that Akamai dynamically updates for you. Some products offered by AWS, Azure, or the Google Cloud can be more tightly integrated with cloud provider offerings thus easier to configure. It also requires an investment of time for the setup which doesn’t necessarily make sense for smaller-scale scenarios.
AppTrana
AppTrana provides a fully managed WAF bundled with optimized core managed rule sets, CDN, and content acceleration over the cloud. You should route your traffic via the AppTrana Service hosted AWS data centers by Indusface in different regions. This product helps to filter the requests from particular Geo-location, IP addresses and provides a summary of blocked attacks in a daily report. It is also effective for DDoS attack prevention. It scans for getting visibility of application-layer vulnerabilities, Bot Mitigation service managed, and Risk-based protection. It also provides custom rules and policy updates with zero false positive guarantees and promises. AppTrana gives a WAF that can easily be deployed. This product permits you to determine the risk posture of the application, patch the vulnerabilities, enhance website performance and make sure proactive remediation against DDOS.
Imperva
Imperva Cloud WAF can be used to protect web applications as well as third-party applications from threats and attacks to ensure the business operations are running smoothly. It acts as a proxy for public-facing websites and also intercept known bad actor IPs, and block them that have shown to be problematic. With the WAF, it is possible to stop any SQL Injection attempts or temporary blocking of IP. It is designed to be very user-friendly and a system straightforward to implement. The features include API security, bot management, backdoor protection, account takeover protection, and a secure CDN that distributes replicas of a protected website on many servers globally to make it quicker to deliver worldwide. Also, its virtual patching feature schedules for all the software and OS patches of the protected network.
Sucuri
Sucuri WAF helps to filter bad traffic from visiting your website,and ensures security from attacks such as XSS, CSRF, Malicious Post Requests, SQLi, Remote File Inclusions, etc. Sucuri protects from DDOS and Brute Force attacks. The CloudProxy package ensures smart caching and high performance distributed over a global network and is compatible with most CDNs, like CloudFlare, Akamai, and MaxCDN! Sucuri WAF solution provides mitigation of external attacks such as vulnerability exploits and DDoS attacks, performance optimization using CDN, and professional response in the event of security incidents. Sucuri’s firewall stops all the attacks before it enters your server. Sucuri’s server side scanner checks each single file to make sure that no malicious content exists on your server. It also offers malware cleanup service with no page limits along with blacklist removal. Security experts’ service charges $250 / hour for consulting, therefore quite expensive.
AWS WAF
AWS WAF helps secure your web applications from common web exploits that could affect CIA Triad. AWS WAF is a versatile and useful tool when it comes to protecting the infrastructures of your applications. This solution is considered a great solution to protect any environment of web applications at the enterprise level because it permits users to create rules according to their needs and vulnerabilities that they wish to block and can control the traffic of all applications. AWS WAF has very friendly APIs for developers to develop firewall rules for the web app and makes your applications more secure.
AWS WAF provides you to control the traffic before it reaches your applications by enabling the security rules creation that blocks common attack types, such as SQLi or XSS, and rules that filter out specific traffic patterns you define. WAF’s The Managed Rules set addresses problems such as the OWASP Top 10 security risks.
Barracuda WAF
The BARRACUDA WAF gives several capabilities like adaptive profiling that helps to build a positive security profile for the web applications by monitoring web traffic. Its server cloaking feature secures server banners, HTTP headers, error messages, debug information, return codes, and backend IP addresses from leaking to the offenders. Also, it provides security against XML-based applications, URL encryption, data loss prevention, and web scraping protection. BARRACUDA WAF offers cloud-connected security and data protection solutions and is available with wide-ranging, reverse proxy-based protection for web applications. This provides high-grade security against application layer and DDoS attacks. This solution eliminates the vulnerabilities in the web, mobile, and API applications application and blocks data breaches by ensuring you maintain your reputation and your customer’s confidence.
F5 WAF
F5 WAF is highly programmable and can integrate into any environment like on-premises or in any cloud. This solution provides functionalities like geolocation and IP intelligence, integration with third-party Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) tools, visibility into HTTP and WebSocket traffic, proactive bot defense and client-side integrity defense, dynamic learning, and site-wide behavioral analysis, security services, and Azure Security Center integration. It is available in a flexible licensing model having 1–3 years of subscription. It also meets compliance standards like PCI DSS. F5 WAF identifies and blocks attacks, especially for those requiring advanced bot protection, app-layer DDoS protection, and encryption of sensitive data and credentials. WAF helps in remediating vulnerabilities, like SQLi, XSS, and sensitive data exposures.
Citrix WAF
Citrix Web App Firewall provides one of the latest generation data security, with all security systems on the web to prevent data loss. It protects web apps and websites from both known and unknown attacks, also from application-layer and zero-day threats. Citrix Web App Firewall has a user-friendly interface that enables anyone to use the product. Citrix WAF protects your services on the internet and provides high availability. Citrix WAF offers comprehensive security without degrading application response times. It is available as integration within the Citrix ADC platform or a cloud solution. It secures web infrastructure against DDoS, XSS, SQLi, and SSL attacks. Citrix WAF offers application virtualization, delivery networking, enterprise mobility management, and cloud. This solution helps enterprises to deliver apps and data with reliability, security, and speed.
Searching for the best Web application firewalls in the market today- whether you are a startup, a small business, or a booming giant, a WAF can ensure their clients with total solutions that will keep their entire networks, data along with their businesses safer. There are several types available that a company is guaranteed to discover a WAF product or service that fits its needs.
WAF has become a modern online business necessity. With traditional WAF appliance offerings available at various performance and price levels, an organization will have ample options for its inline and on-site needs. Using a SaaS-based managed WAF is a good alternative for enterprises that do not want to procure new hardware and have time to hire and train staff to manage it.
In addition, the WAF has to facilitate the customer journey into cloud adoption by permitting hybrid deployment models but with the cloud benefit of a centralized pane for visibility of protection posture across all web apps independent of where the firewall is deployed.
