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Interesting aspect of any technological development is it encompasses and influences all types of users including those who are qualified beneficiaries and also the people with criminal mindset. Internet technology can be an ideal example of this since it is also helping cyber criminals in addition to a vast population of website owners who are located across the globe.
Evolution of WAFs
Conventionally, firewalls offered sound protection against cyber attacks. However, as the technology developed, hackers gained access to state of the art hacking tools and amazing capabilities to penetrate legacy firewalls. Most of the modern cyber hacks are deceptive in terms of their initial appearance such as authentic registration requests and so forth.
Since these requests are perceived as normal, legacy firewalls allow further processing. Once inside, it is only a matter of a special request made by the cyber criminal to steal sensitive information from your site.
Web Application Firewalls evolved in response to the technological prowess gained by modern hackers. WAF is a specially developed defense to protect mission critical data by monitoring the network traffic to ward off suspicious intruders from gaining entry inside the sanctum sanctorum of your web venture.
Web Application Firewalls prevent this from happening by reducing unwarranted exposure of your applications to evil forces of cyber attacks such as DDoS, SQL injection, and many other types of malware attacks.
Designed for greater security
Web Application Firewalls are far more superior to conventional firewalls because these are designed to provide protection to applications with an added security layer. Unlike standard firewalls WAFs need no rewriting of rules time and again and thus promise operational ease.
Every time a new threat or intrusion is identified, a Web Application Firewall can be updated with the relevant attack signature. This will make sure that WAF has learned the new patterns of traffic that need to be dealt with. WAF is built to operate more intelligently than its traditional version.
Advanced protection
Web Application Firewall works at a deeper level by securing applications rather than servers against cyber attacks. This guarantees greater customization of the defense measure according to the individual application that promises far better protection against spoofing attacks, data leaks and any other attack that may be designed to compromise data integrity. Traditionally, firewalls are meant to be one-size-fits-all solutions that leave hardly any room for customization.
The list of malicious attacks that can be effectively blocked by Web Application Firewall is highly impressive and includes the most feared varieties such as DDoS or cross site scripts. If you are running an ecommerce site, then WAFs can also protect your specific app resources including WordPress and other mission critical applications.
In addition to offer excellent customizability, WAFs are also extremely flexible in design thereby allowing users to make changes in settings which can be further automated for a swift response to block attacks of similar nature and profile from identical sources. As the WAF gets matured, the need for manual intervention is progressively minimized. Of course, you will always be in a control to decide what type of web traffic should be allowed or blocked in a WAF protected environment.
WAFs are also highly sought after for their ability to automatically protect applications from a wide array of threats providing a broad scope for customization empowered by robust rule sets. The layer 7 security of WAF environment comes with seamless guarantee to defend DDoS attacks.
Puts an end to data leakage
There is a plethora of methods being adopted by hackers to collect data by breaking into seemingly impregnable defenses. It is found that a minor issue of an error message may be a sign of devastating potential of a data hack. Every type of data leak can snowball into a full-blown disaster especially in case of an ecommerce infrastructure that is built to store critical information regarding online transactions.
WAF arrests the data leak by stringently scanning each and every visitor in terms of the requests made while accessing your web applications. Some of the reputed Web Application Firewalls are designed to use built-in data or records of credit card details or social security and other user credentials that are suspicious behavior signatures. This data can always be modified by WAF users by adding specific codes or information.
In conclusion
If you are running an ecommerce business or an application that is designed to collect personal details of users, then you owe it to your customers to provide them a secure environment that can guarantee seamless protection of their credentials. Failure to do so will not only jeopardize your business but can also shatter its reputation.
Every online business venture must adopt security of Web Application Firewall to make sure that integrity of the important data is never compromised. It certainly pays to acquire WAF protection than exposing your business as well as reputation to street smart hackers.
Arijit Mukherjee is an India based content writer specializing in Tech Sector. It is exciting to explore several technical genres and learn different things. I am open to learn different things which are related to new technologies.