Why should you get a WAF Cloud?

Cloud WAF market analysis according to Gartner

The web application and API protection (WAAP) market is thriving. This is mainly due to the increasing adoption of enterprise cloud-based WAF for their public-facing applications. By 2023, more than 20 percent of public-facing applications may be protected by cloud-based web application and API protection (WAAP) services that combine distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, bot mitigation, API protection and WAF.[1]

Why should I get cloud WAF security?

If you’re looking for something more than on-premises security solutions, for your cloud-hosted applications, the best way is to make sure your cloud services are running behind a trustworthy cloud-based web application firewall.

Volumetric denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are one of the biggest security challenges. This is because they negatively affect businesses in a variety of ways. A cloud-based WAF with superior anti-DDoS and mitigation capabilities is a good candidate to protect enterprises from these ravages. Ideally, it should have a low false positive and false negative rate. It also blocks major application-based attacks like SQL injections, XSS, Path Traversal, etc.

A Cloud WAF thwarts traffic based on a set of predefined rules.

It comes with additional features such as Geo IP. This can help you block access from certain countries to your website by only allowing requests that match your Geo IP condition (list of countries you want to allow to send requests). If there is no match, security logs are created. The user is instantly directed to a specific error page. This feature not only blocks malicious requests from all over the world, but also benefits your existing customers.

Another powerful feature that helps mitigate DDoS attacks is rate limiting. It allows you to set an ideal ratio (number of requests/unit of time) for each IP address. For example, if the rule is to allow 15 incoming requests every 5 seconds, it will block clients that have more requests than that limit. This feature protects your resources from excessive use by unwanted users. And in fact, it increases the overall throughput. Limiting throughput prevents an attacker from testing many vulnerabilities and using evasion techniques.

IP reputation, an important feature

IP reputation is another interesting feature. Cloud WAFs can leverage a database of real-time threat intelligence to effectively protect customers against threats posed by IP addresses. First, the incoming client’s IP address is tested against an updated IP reputation database. Next, the database returns a reputation score and the threat category of the customer’s IP. Finally, based on the score, you can make an informed decision about whether to blacklist the attacking IP.

You can assess and monitor the environment by performing intelligent security scans, similar to a traditional WAF. You can collect logs and export them to a SIEM solution, so no threat goes unnoticed.

Plus, it’s much easier to deploy your WAF on the AWS Marketplace when the applications to be protected are in AWS. It offers scalability, based on the “pay as you go” marketplace model.

Exploiting the strength of the solution

A Cloud WAF leverages multiple web and client applications in a single platform. WAFs have security engines that create certain rules to block attacks or malware. However, the ever-changing attack surface consists of complex application and DDoS threats that require more advanced capabilities. To adapt to this, some vendors are now enhancing their cloud WAFs with machine learning or artificial intelligence methods to provide a fast and responsive defense mechanism with application and API-specific rules.

Our WAF Cloud solutions

UBIKA offers a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF). Our WAF can be deployed in the cloud. It is very easy to set up and instantiate and has all the advantages of the on-premises / on-premises version. On the other hand, UBIKA Cloud Protector (WAAP-as-a-Service) is ideal for companies that want to rely entirely on Software-as-a-Service deployment in the cloud to be as flexible as possible. Unlike the cloud-hosted version, you do not have to manage software updates for it.