What Does WAF as a Service Do?
WAFaaS acts as an intermediary between web applications and their advanced users. It inspects inbound HTTP requests to the web application and can identify and block various types of malicious traffic before they reach a potentially vulnerable web application.
WAFaaS differs from other WAFs because it is offered as a service rather than a standalone solution.
This enables an organization to subscribe to the level of protection it needs and adapt quickly as business and security needs change.
The Need for WAF as a Service
Cloud environments evolve rapidly as DevOps teams push out new releases and updates at regular intervals. Each of these updates has the potential to introduce:
- New applications to protect
- New vulnerabilities in existing applications
While corporate cloud infrastructure expands, so do cybercriminals’ capabilities.
Newly discovered vulnerabilities and attack techniques pose a significant threat to corporate web applications and can be difficult to remediate quickly at scale.
WAFaaS is essential to protecting an organization’s cloud web applications against potential exploitation. With the ability to identify and block attempted exploits in web traffic, they reduce the potential impacts of web application vulnerabilities on the organization and its customers.
Main Capabilities of WAF as a Service
WAFaaS can be a critical component of an organization’s cloud application security (AppSec) strategy. Some key capabilities of WAFaaS offerings include the following:
- Real-Time Protection: WAFaaS monitors traffic to web applications and blocks attempted attacks in real time.
- Application-Layer Attack Security: Many threats to web applications occur at the application layer or Layer 7 of the OSI model. WAFaaS offerings must have deep visibility and understanding of application traffic and the ability to correctly identify attempted attacks.
- API Protection: In addition to protecting web applications, WAFaaS should also offer security geared toward cloud APIs as part of a holistic web application and API protection (WAAP) service.
- Threat Intelligence Integration: Directly ingesting threat intelligence feeds enables WAFaaS solutions to more quickly identify and block emerging and persistent threats to web apps.
- Intelligent Threat Detection: Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) are powerful tools for identifying novel and sophisticated attacks. WAFaaS solutions that integrate these capabilities offer superior threat prevention capabilities than those that do not.
- Management and Reporting: Security teams need visibility and reporting capabilities to track the effectiveness of security solutions and generate internal and external reports. WAFaaS solutions should offer configurable reporting capabilities to streamline the process of collecting, formatting, and reporting essential data.
WAF as a Service with CloudGuard WAF
As corporate cloud deployments expand and rapid development introduces new security risks, WAFaaS is a critical part of an organization’s application security and threat prevention strategy. Check Point CloudGuard WAF offers WAFaaS capabilities — as well as other essential features — to protect corporate cloud assets against attack.
Learn more about building security in the cloud with CloudGuard AppSec by checking out this whitepaper. Then, see CloudGuard’s WAFaaS and other security capabilities in action by signing up for a free demo.
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