Best Web Application Firewalls for 2023

best web application firewalls

People won’t be able to browse any website, including your developed android application, blog, online store, or any other type of website, if it isn’t secure. Search engines won’t provide the URL to it. Your business would suffer as a result because you would lose important clients. As a result, you must protect your website and pages from hackers who might introduce malware, viruses, or other adware.

Software like Web Application Firewall (WAF) is one of the tools that can assist you in doing so.

What is WAF?

Online application firewalls (WAF) guard websites and web applications against hacker attacks. Most businesses utilize them as the primary security strategy to guard against threats and vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting (XSS), file inclusion, malware infestations, zero-day exploits, impersonation, and cross-site forging. The firewalls track, filter, and stop malicious data packets from entering and leaving the website.

To examine each data packet and analyze layer 7-application (OSI model) logic in accordance with some rules, WAF can be implemented as a network appliance, cloud-based service, or server plugin.

Another Thoughtful Read: Why Should You Develop Your Own OTT Application?

Web application firewall types

Web Application Firewalls (WAF) can be roughly classified into three categories:

Host-Based WAF

Because it is completely incorporated into the application code, this kind of firewall offers greater customization possibilities at a lower cost.

These WAFs are difficult to manage because they depend heavily on the performance of the nearby servers and require application libraries.

WAF based on networks

These hardware-based WAFs are implemented locally, on-site, and close to the application utilizing a dedicated appliance. It aids in cutting down on latency.

Network-based WAFs are expensive since they demand the purchase of capital hardware resources, hardware upkeep, and other operational costs. Large-scale deployment, maintenance, and configuration are all made possible by replicating a set of security and configuration rules across numerous appliances.

WAF hosted via cloud

These WAFs are low-cost solutions that take up little in the way of organizational resources to administer and implement.

 

Because cloud WAFs are external entities, it might be challenging for businesses to put their data in their hands.

However, these organizations permit a wide range of hosting locations, offer protection from application-layer attacks, and use their most recent intelligence to help identify and stop the new danger.

These firewalls feature a straightforward DNS (Domain Name Server) or proxy to reroute traffic and are simple to deploy on a subscription basis.

There are many WAFs on the market, and in this article, we’ll examine some of the greatest ones.

List of Best WAFs

Cloudflare

Cloudflare offers distributed domain name server providers, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and content delivery services.

The service scans the internet for new updates, including assaults and vulnerabilities. Web application Firewalls (WAF) rules are automatically activated for anything that the majority of their clients deem to be a threat. These will safeguard all online properties. CloudFlare’s protection is always active, thanks to ongoing updates.

The platform may rely on collective intelligence to eliminate dangers because of its big consumer base. In other words, Cloudflare chooses whether a new WAF rule created by one customer applies to all other domains on their network.

AWS

Part of Amazon.com is Amazon Web Services. It offers both people and companies platforms for on-demand cloud computing. AWS WAF is accessible to users as part of this subscription (opens in a new tab).

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that guards against risks that could jeopardize their security or drain their resources. The actual answer is simple and easy to apply.

Users can establish custom rules to stop typical attack types like cross-site scripting. The system offers a robust API that enables customers to automate all active rules’ development, deployment, and upkeep.

Sophos

A British firm called Sophos develops hardware and software for security. It creates products for network security, endpoint encryption, and unified threat management.

Comprehensive threat management that also serves as a wireless gateway and application security is called Sophos Firewall.

From the ‘Control Center’ of Sophos, users can manage settings. Subscribers can view the utility dashboard from here. You may view your network, users, and applications with this. Also available is Sophos “iView.” Through this, reporting for many firewalls is centralized.

Users may get an overview of features, including traffic insights, system statistics, and firewall rules, through the management interface.

Users can try out Sophos for free for 30 days. This covers Web and App Control, Anti-Phishing, Sandboxing, Dual AV, IPS, ATP, and Web Application Firewall. For a quote, subscribers must speak with Sophos directly.

Akamai Kona Site Defender

DDoS defense is integrated with Akamai Kona Site Defender’s (opens in new tab) web application firewall. These ratings determine how well an IP address can identify questionable traffic. Additionally, users can change settings to specify which IP addresses they want to be blacklisted.

The free trial period and a quote can be started by contacting Akamai directly, which is how subscribers currently do so.

Imperva

All traffic entering your online services passes via the Imperva Web Application Firewall(opens in new tab). It blocks harmful users and requests, including XSS and SQL injections.

Threats are identified by the solution using several security policy levels. A security staff looks after these.

Imperva maintains 24/7 surveillance thanks to its 45 DDoS-scrubbing data centers around the globe.

Interested parties should contact Imperva directly to request a quote or start a free trial.

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