It’s Time to Concentrate on Strengthening Web Application Firewalls (WAF)
In the COVID-19 era, while remote working has become the new norm, security breaches have also dominated the headlines. This has made organizations look beyond traditional network security like the firewall to protect their web applications. No longer can security for web applications be ignored and to overcome the challenges posed by the new waves of security threats organizations need to focus on bettering their web application security. A WAF protects web applications from a variety of application layer attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection (SQLi), brute-force attacks, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) and cookie poisoning among others. These attacks result in breaches leading to direct access of users’ valuable data. With the right WAF in place, users can block an array of attacks that aim to exfiltrate that data by compromising their systems. This is one reason why analysts believe that the WAF market will show a high growth rate of more than 18.50% for a forecast period of 2018-2025.
“Most vulnerabilities in web applications are a result of developer errors. Traditional scanners, intrusion detection or prevention systems (IDS/IPS) and firewalls can’t always detect these advance web application attacks. This is where Array’s WAF supports organizations in providing 360-degree protection with no excuse for web attacks and also ensuring continuity and high availability of web applications while reducing security risks. This form of security branches out to provide robust protection for users, especially helping those with remote access,” said Shibu Paul, Vice President – International Sales at Array Networks.
The WAF protects web applications by filtering, monitoring and blocking any malicious HTTP/S traffic travelling to the web application and prevents any unauthorized data from leaving the application. It does this by adhering to a set of policies that help determine what traffic is malicious and what traffic is safe. This is where Array’s AVX Series helps organizations in decreasing the opportunity of facing undesirable web security issues. It uses a multilayer defence scheme with many specialized modules to provide precise and impenetrable protection of web, mobile and ERP applications. It not only detects the complex web application attacks but also blocks the attack traffic in real-time without affecting the normal flow of business data traffic.
But, why is Array’s WAF unique?
- Array’s WAF can be deployed a cloud as well as virtual function on a dedicated hardware appliance of Array’s AVX Series which ensures guaranteed performance.
- It provides Advanced L7 DDoS Protection.
- It handles grey traffic with unsupervised Machine Learning.
- It can be deployed via in-line mode where the traffic is routed through the Array’s WAF.
- Mirror mode can be used where a router mirrors traffic to Array’s WAF, which then detects potential threats and alerts your existing security systems.
- Offline mode is another option where the WAF examines logs for evidence of previous attacks for forensic analysis.
In short, Array’s WAF is custom-built to adapt across the data centers or the cloud. By using WAF, organizations can protect businesses intellectual property, protect client details, which in turn, protect the organization’s reputation, revenue and help in avoiding legal action.
To sum it up, while inducting a WAF, organizations need to make sure that they are protecting their entire application ecosystem. Organizations have many times ignored the frontend and only concentrated on protecting the backend of web applications and without proper protection, attackers will target server assets through the exposed web applications.
