Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) are essential security solutions, protecting organizations against cyber attacks that threaten financial loss and reputational harm.
Multiple WAF vendors offer WAF solutions with features such as OWASP protection, bot management and cloud CDN to set themselves apart and provide strong security with high performance.
1. Single Sciences
Single Sciences’ cloud-native WAF provides a complete security solution, both onsite and cloud, without manual maintenance requirements. Their SmartParse feature detects malicious code within requests to keep your application secure; and they act as dual agents protecting both API and web servers simultaneously.
Customers report easy deployment and high vendor support. Furthermore, they enjoy how easily rules can be configured; however clients express concern that testing and updating policies remain limited.
Akamai remains the most expensive solution in our 2022 Magic Quadrant for Web Application and API Protection (WAF). Gartner analysts note that its price point can deter potential buyers, and client feedback suggests they’re considering alternative brands instead. Furthermore, monitoring and reporting issues persist – although Akamai is actively working to address them by adding bot mitigation features as separate offerings to its WAF product offering.
2. Imperva
Gartner recently named Imperva a Leader in its Magic Quadrant report for cloud web application firewall (WAF) services, which provide protection to public-facing web applications and APIs by mitigating runtime attacks such as those from OWASP Top 10 threats or automated exploits.
The company provides two versions of its WAF system, both designed to accommodate small business owners without much technical know-how, and large enterprises with IT departments. Both options are PCI compliant, have SIEM integration capabilities and produce low numbers of false positives when blocking threats.
The WAF is constructed using SecureSphere Linux, and uses bi-directional packet inspection technology for deep inspection of bi-directional traffic, cross-site scripting protection, JSON payload inspection, SQL injection protection and signature/behavior-based detection to help safeguard accounts against account takeover and other forms of malicious activity. Imperva security researchers collaborate on providing live crowdsourced attack intelligence data with which it detects cyberattacks – helping prevent account takeovers or any other forms of malfeasance from taking place.
3. Cloudflare
Cloudflare provides businesses with a global network of servers that serve as data caches, web application firewalls and DDoS mitigation. As it’s offered as a cloud solution, it makes this service an attractive option for multicloud environments or those limited by geographical restrictions for cloud services.
Cloudflare provides all outgoing and incoming website traffic with its servers to be evaluated for potential threats such as brute force attacks or bots trying to access sensitive information on websites. Once added to Cloudflare servers, all traffic moves through them. All data analyzed for potential issues like brute force attacks or bots trying to gain entry.
Cloudflare also provides DNS hosting to manage domain names, as well as Content Delivery Network services that deliver your site from geographically nearest servers for faster loading speeds. Cloudflare’s security capabilities extend further still – such as page rules which add further protection by blocking traffic based on IP address, hostname, known bots or URI.
4. Akamai
Akamai, one of the oldest CDNs, provides a secure platform that keeps websites online even during attacks. Their web application firewall (WAF) protects applications against SQL injection and cross-site scripting while reducing false positives; their graphical reporting feature helps users better understand their security status.
Akamai’s distributed network of servers is utilized by CNN and C-SPAN to distribute video content directly to PCs, eliminating bottlenecks at central sites for faster and more reliable content delivery.
The vendor provides an all-in-one management console to monitor and manage multiple WAF instances at once, helping businesses prevent costly data breaches and downtime through features such as DDoS protection and an extensive database of common attack patterns. Furthermore, its protection against API attacks granular visibility into traffic flow as well as machine learning bot detection makes it an economical solution suitable for small to mid-sized businesses that can handle up to 10 online threats simultaneously.