As business become more depending upon websites, web applications, APIs and cloud based Services we see an increase in targeted attacks on these Web-Facing assets. Newer forms of cyber attacks (Web Attacks) can result in data breaches, monetary loss, disruption of service, or damage to your reputation. The use of traditional network security alone is not sufficient to protect against these evolving attacks.
A WAF (Web Application Firewall) provides an extra layer of protection between the user and your web application by inspecting and filtering all incoming requests in real time to prevent malicious traffic from reaching your critical business systems.
A WAF is a security device designed for the inspection, monitoring, and filtering of all HTTP and HTTPS requests being sent from a user to a web application. Unlike a traditional firewall which protects against attacks occurring at the network layer, a web application firewall protects against attacks occurring at the application layer.
By inspecting the incoming traffic to your web application, a WAF is able to detect any malicious requests it may receive and stop these requests before they can adversely affect your business operations or compromise sensitive information.
Web Application Firewalls (WAF) can be an effective way to protect your organization's web applications. As the primary targets of many cybercriminals, modern businesses face an ever-increasing number of threats. Typically, a business's web applications hold the majority of their sensitive data, including customer information and financial data, as well as any business-related property. Because cybercriminals are continuously scanning the web for exploitable vulnerabilities on websites and applications, the number of threats against these technologies is likely to increase.
With the trend toward the use of services delivered via the cloud (i.e., API/Web Services, eCommerce, and Customer Portals), the surface area of attack against your organization has expanded significantly. A WAF adds an additional layer of protection, reducing the possibility of your business suffering from a successful attack.
The modern WAF was designed to help identify and block a large portion of today's web-based attacks.
Some attackers attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in web applications by executing SQL statements (SQL Injection). Attackers respond to responses from an application by sending malicious input to a database as part of an SQL statement. Successful SQL Injection attacks may result in sensitive data being disclosed, records being modified, or the granting of unauthorized privileges to the attacker.
A WAF can help identify and block SQL Injection attacks by monitoring and filtering potentially malicious SQL statements before they reach the web application.
Attackers may inject malicious code into web applications (Cross-Site Scripting) and use that code to view the user's session data, steal credentials, and/or extract other types of sensitive information.
A WAF can help you identify and block attacks using XSS by filtering out potentially malicious input and/or requests from web application users.
Bots are often used as tools in credential stuffing, account take-overs, web scraping, and a number of different fraudulent activities designed to steal from people.
Today’s Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) rely on user activity patterns and a collection of threat intelligence data collected from across the internet to detect and block malicious bot traffic while still allowing legitimate users to use the appropriate services.
Attackers will send a large amount of traffic to a website to try and shut the site down or bring it to a crawl.
Many WAFs have DDoS mitigation functionality built in that helps to filter out and absorb the malicious traffic before it can have an affect on any mission critical applications that are running on the network.
As more and more businesses and organizations rely on APIs to deliver services, the frequency of attacks targeting APIs increases because they expose unsecured endpoints providing unauthorized access to the API or taking/stealing sensitive information.
A WAF provides monitoring of API traffic, enforces security policy, and identifies abnormal traffic patterns that may indicate an attack against an API.
A WAF will provide more than just the ability to prevent attacks from occurring. A WAF allows you to gain visibility into your web traffic, helps organizations identify suspicious activity on their networks, and assists organizations in meeting compliance mandates for data protection and security policies.
WAF logs and other monitoring capabilities can also aid in the incident investigation process and strengthen an organization’s overall security posture.
Many businesses today have applications hosted both in traditional data-centers as well as on different types of cloud-based platforms and hybrid environments. Cloud WAF solutions provide scalable protection that dynamically adjusts to changing workloads and volumes of incoming traffic without the need to change complex underlying infrastructure.
Organizations gain the flexibility to provide consistent security controls across distributed environments, while also allowing them to grow their business.
A WAF is an important element in a company’s overall cybersecurity strategy; however, it is not effective unless followed up by continued monitoring, regular vulnerability scanning, secure development life-cycle practices, and threat detection capabilities.
Organizations that implement both WAFs and other security controls in their organization can be able to protect themselves from the constantly evolving cyber threats.
Today’s digital landscape still sees web applications as one of the most popular attack vectors available to attackers. The evolution of today’s cyber threats means that proactive security measures to detect and block cyber attacks before any harm is inflicted is necessary for any organization.
A substantial protective layer exists by using a Web Application Firewall (WAF), which mitigates against a variety of typical web-based threats while also providing organizations with an avenue to detect, monitor and manage secure and reliable online services.
With the help of Ancrew Global Services, organizations are able to enhance their web security through WAF implementations, security assessments, vulnerability assessments and penetration testing (VAPT), ongoing monitoring, and securing cloud solutions. Ancrew is helping organizations secure their web applications, decrease cyber risks and establish a resilient security posture against contemporary web threats.