10 Reasons to Persist in Using WAF

WAF (Web Application Firewall) is undoubtedly one of the most widely used and mature network security products in the past few decades. Most organizations with web applications deploy WAF applications to protect data and assets from illegal intrusion. However, with the advent of the DevOps era of agile application development, many people believe that WAF will no longer shine, as it not only struggles to keep up with the accelerating pace of release and update of current web application systems, but also brings complex and laborious system maintenance pressures.

However, extensive practical experience has shown that the "secure left shift" mode, which fully embeds security features into applications, is not applicable to all web application systems; Many application systems provided by third-party developers also require additional threat control during their operation; At the same time, WAF systems themselves are constantly evolving, and the protection capabilities and scope of the new generation WAF systems have far exceeded our traditional understanding. They are not only a security solution, but also a tool that empowers businesses.

In this context, the security professional forum "cybertalk. org" recently published an article stating that network security decision-makers should fully understand that WAF will still be an indispensable component of advanced network security strategies for enterprise organizations in the future. By using WAF, the following benefits can be brought to the digital business development of enterprises:

1. Meet compliance requirements

Regulatory compliance is one of the main driving factors for modern enterprises to build their network security capabilities. By using WAF systems, organizations can more easily meet the legal compliance requirements set by regulatory authorities, as they provide comprehensive web application security control measures and detailed system audit logs.

Almost all WAF systems can provide fine-grained logging and reporting capabilities, allowing organizations to clearly demonstrate their efforts and efforts in protecting sensitive data. In addition, most WAF systems currently have customizable protection rule sets that can meet constantly changing compliance requirements, making it easier for organizations to maintain compliance.

2. Effectively prevent known threats

WAF can effectively respond to most known types of application layer attacks, especially severe vulnerability threats on the OWASP Top 10 Threat List. WAF systems require minimal tuning for protection and have a low false positive rate. Because WAF is able to continuously update rule base information and maintain consistency with the latest OWASP security guidelines, it reduces the likelihood of known attacks succeeding.

3. Implement API security protection

The current generation of WAF systems generally provides specialized protection measures against API specific threat characteristics, ensuring the integrity of API data exchange. WAF can quickly identify and prevent threats such as API parameter tampering, and discover abnormal behavior patterns that may indicate API abuse. In some multifunctional WAF systems, the ability to understand and validate complex API calls has also been added, ensuring that the web application system only processes legitimate API call requests. These advanced WAF systems can also perform rate limiting and access control for different API endpoints.

4 Protection against Robot Programs and DDoS Attacks

By using the next-generation WAF system, organizations can accurately identify malicious bot traffic and legitimate bot traffic, preventing threats such as DDoS attacks, credential stuffing, and content scraping. The new feature of WAF system is becoming increasingly important for enterprises, as robot programs are wreaking havoc online in unprecedented ways and having a serious negative impact on organizational revenue and customer experience.

5 Real time intelligence utilization

The new generation of WAF systems can utilize real-time threat intelligence and machine learning techniques to analyze traffic patterns, providing protection against emerging threats and enabling organizations to respond to malicious situations before large-scale attacks occur.

6. Reduce the security responsibility of the development team

Through the security protection capabilities provided by the WAF system, organizations can discover and prevent vulnerabilities at the application layer after the system goes live. This greatly reduces the security pressure on development or IT teams, allowing them to focus on implementing core business functions rather than repeatedly patching security issues during the development process.

Although this conflicts with the concept of 'secure left shift', reducing the security pressure on developers can undoubtedly accelerate the launch cycle of business systems. In addition, threat detection information provided by WAF can also help developers understand common application attack patterns and enable everyone to learn how to carry out better security practices.

Implement business oriented security rules

In many advanced WAF systems, users are allowed to flexibly create and adjust protection rules tailored to the specific business needs of the organization. This customization capability brings great flexibility, making it easy to adapt to unique application software architectures and traffic patterns, minimizing false positives while maintaining high reliability of business system operations.

Organizations can create rules to address their business specific threats, such as preventing application specific business logic attacks. Before implementing the new rules, the WAF system is able to gradually implement and test the new rules in monitored mode, ensuring that changes in security measures do not disrupt normal business system operations.

Balancing Security and User Experience

Enterprises often need to make a trade-off between security and system availability, and in many new WAF systems, advanced content delivery network (CDN) functionality is built in, which can improve the performance and user experience of application software while maintaining web application security.

By using caching content distribution technology, the latency of web applications can be significantly reduced, the loading process of pages can be shortened, and the user experience can be enhanced. The dual manifestation of security and performance optimization is the attractive selling point of the new generation WAF system. Organizations can improve the security posture and user satisfaction of web applications simultaneously through a single network security solution.

9. Enhance safety operation capability

The new generation WAF system can provide various security operation situation observation and analysis capabilities related to traffic patterns, attack trends, and application software behavior, and provide clear action recommendations for security operators based on this. These insights help organizations continuously improve their security posture, provide information basis for proactive risk assessment, and assist cybersecurity personnel in better allocating security resources.

10 Evolution towards Cloud Native Security

As enterprise organizations continue to migrate to cloud computing platforms, WAF systems for cloud environments can ensure consistent web application protection across hybrid and multi cloud infrastructures. In addition, the continuously cloudified WAF system can automatically expand with application software, providing consistent protection during peak traffic or rapid cloud expansion.

Cloud WAF can provide centralized management, which simplifies the security management work of enterprises and ensures consistent execution of policies. With its practical functional features, cloud WAF can more effectively protect against emerging threats.

Reference link:

https://www.cybertalk.org/2024/06/20/10-web-application-firewall-benefits-to-keep-top-of-mind/