What Is a Web Application Firewall and What Are Its Benefits?

Posted on by Jeremy Posted in Ask the expertsTagged , , , , , , , , , ,

KEY POINTS

  • A 2021 cyber security report by Check Point identified that “75% of attacks in 2020 used vulnerabilities that were at least two years old”
  • The same report also found that “87% of organizations have experienced an attempted exploit of an already known, existing vulnerability”.
  • Injection attacks, such as SQL injections and LDAP injections, rank 3# on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top Ten web application security risks.

This Ask the Experts session stems from a question originally posted on Quora titled “What Is a Web Application Firewall and What Are Its Benefits?“

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a security device which protects web applications from malicious attacks such as SQL injection (SQLI), cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF) denial of service (DoS), distributed denial of service (DDoS) and many other types of attacks which target an web application. WAFs acts as a barrier between the web application and the internet, analyzing and filtering incoming traffic for malicious requests.

The benefits of using a WAF are but not limited to:

  • Improved security: A WAF helps to prevent security breaches and protect sensitive data.
  • Compliance: A WAF can assist in achieving and maintaining compliance with security regulations such as PCI DSS.
  • Improved website performance: A WAF can help reduce the number of malicious requests and improve website performance.
  • Real-time protection: A WAF provides real-time protection, detecting and blocking attacks in real-time.
  • Customization: A WAF can be configured to meet the specific security needs of an organization, providing a high level of protection that is tailored to the organization’s requirements.

There are many WAFs available on the market such as:

  • Cloudflare WAF
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) WAF
  • Azure WAF
  • Sucuri Website Firewall
  • Wordfence WAF

Have any questions regarding WAFs or application security in general? Contact us and we will be glad continue the dialog! Do not forget to click here to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more information security related tips and tricks.

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