The Top 10 Web Application Firewalls

Based in Cambridge, MA, Akamai Technologies have developed an integrated web application firewall with bot mitigation, API security, and layer 7 DDoS protection. The solution provides high performance for end-users, with a wide range of customization possibilities. Admins receive automatic updates of network status as part of a streamlined remediation process. The interface is also easy to manage through a clean interface that offers extensive visibility into all traffic and attacks. Akamai offer a range of pricing models, each with different features and capabilities for different use cases.

The solution has an advanced API discovery feature that allows admins to manage risks with new or previously unknown APIs. It also supports DevOps integration through a simple GUI. DDoS protection is delivered through the application layer. The Akamai App & API Protector can be deployed quickly and managed easily. The solution provides in-portal guides, wizard setups, and configuration workflows to assist in initial onboarding and configurations. Other notable features include bot detection and add-on tools like advanced AppSec management controls, managed services, and professional services. Akamai provide useful support during onboarding and can help you fully customize the solution to your needs. We would recommend the platform for companies of all backgrounds and sizes that need a versatile, yet robust, solution.

The AWS WAF is a powerful web application firewall that delivers robust protection from common threats like web exploits and bots through diligent monitoring, filtering, and rate-limiting capabilities. The solution is managed through the AWS Firewall Manager, giving admins centralized, unified access to data and controls. Widely customizable, the solution allows for teams to develop their own rules and policies in line with company procedures or compliance requirements. This is achieved with the tool’s native, visual rule builder or JSON code.

The tools filtration capabilities are particularly robust; admins can successfully filter out attacks such as SOLi and XXS, as well as filtering out unwanted traffic based on IP addresses or behavior. AWS WAF can be managed entirely through APIs, allowing teams to create and maintain rules automatically. The solution provides extensive visibility, providing real-time metrics and can capture a raw request’s metadata regarding geo location, URLs, and IP addresses. This solution would suit medium to large sized companies that use AWS web applications.

Barracuda is a California-based company specializing in network appliance and cloud service solutions. Part of Barracuda’s Cloud Application Protection platform, Barracuda’s Web Application Firewall defends applications, APIs, and mobile app backends against vulnerabilities such as the OWASP Top 10, as well as sophisticated web-based attacks. In addition to offering reliable traffic inspection and filtering, the solution also scans all outbound traffic to deliver effective data loss prevention capabilities. It also delivers adaptive profiling, file upload control, bot spam protection, volumetric and application DDoS protection, exception heuristics, and granular policy configuration.  Barracuda’s WAF can be configured to deploy updates automatically; this means that the solution is aware of new and emerging threats. The solution itself has strong authentication and access control capabilities; this ensures that security is always enforced and access to applications and data is monitored.

Barracuda’s Web Application Firewall stands out for its attractive and intuitive interface; it’s highly customizable, with a wealth of “out-of-the-box” functionality that makes it effective from day one. The solution can be deployed as a physical appliance, virtual appliance, or to the cloud, and is also offered as a managed service. It also offers a full REST API and strong integrations with Barracuda’s other cybersecurity products, including their leading email security platform. Overall, we recommend Barracuda’s Web Application Firewall as a strong solution for any organization also in the market for email security.

Cloudflare is a San Francisco-based cloud security company that provides a range of solutions including content delivery network services, cloud cybersecurity, and DDoS mitigation. The Cloudflare WAF is a comprehensive WAF platform that offers fast DNS, a global content delivery network (CDN), and robust DDoS protection. Cloudflare WAF uses machine learning-based detection to automatically block emerging threats in real-time, including WAF attacks, XSS attacks, SQL injection attacks, and remote code execution attacks. This complements the platform’s layered rulesets – these include OWASP rules, managed rules, and custom rulesets. The platform also uses advanced rate limiting to stop abuse, DDoS, and brute-force attacks on applications and APIs, and well as offering real-time logging and raw log file access.

In terms of management, the platform is very easy to deploy in just a few clicks, without any need for extra training; it only requires a DNS change. It offers no-code configuration tools for easy and quick setup, and a Managed Ruleset – a set of pre-configured rules that offer fast and immediate protection from zero-day vulnerabilities, common attack techniques, data exfiltration, and stolen credentials. It also offers an API for integrating with SIEM tools and Cloudflare’s other products, it’s compatible with third-party platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Plone, Drupal, Magneto, and IIS, and it’s FEDRamp compliant. Overall, we recommend Cloudflare WAF as a strong solution for any organization looking for a WAF that’s easy to set up and manage, yet offers strong protection against new and emerging threats.

F5 is a Seattle-based application and network security specialist that also focuses on application delivery. F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF is their web application firewall, which is designed to protect against threats that other firewalls miss. It covers the OWASP Top 10, and provides guided configurations for common WAF use cases. The platform combines machine learning, threat intelligence, and deep application expertise for application protection, as well as offering security for GraphQL REST/JSON, XML, and GWT APIs. Further security features include encryption at the app layer to protect against data-extracting malware and man-in-the-browser attacks; accurate L7 DoS detection and mitigation powered by machine learning; stolen credential protection; and proactive bot defense that protects apps against automated bot attacks.

F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF offers public cloud, private cloud, and physical infrastructure deployment options, and deployment and configuration are API-based. Once deployed, it can integrate with a broad range of third-party security tools, including DAST, SAST, SIEM, SOAR, and XDR tools. With all that considered, we recommend F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF as a strong solution for any organizations looking to protect their web apps and APIs.

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF solution is a unified, hybrid SaaS solution that protects applications, APIs, and microservices against sophisticated attacks such as account takeover, credential stuffing, API abuse, malicious bots, and OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. The platform provides constant and effective Layer 7 visibility into the entire application and API environment.  It detects and blocks attacks in SOAP, REST, gRPC, WebSockets, and GraphQL APIs, and prevents bad bots from performing malicious actions against websites and APIs. The solution can also block account takeover and API abuse by inspecting web requests and correlating anomalous activity with malicious intent; anything that isn’t authorized can simply be blocked. It also offers DDoS protection, and rate limiting features that stop malicious and/or anomalous high-volume web requests. 

Fastly Next-Gen WAF offers flexible deployment, including cloud, data center, hybrid, and containerized environments, and it integrates easily with DevOps and security tools. The solution comes with a range of “out-of-the-box” features for fast onboarding and routine management, and the user interface is clean and intuitive, making it easy to find reports and relevant alerts. Fastly offers a range of pricing plans with tiered features catering to a range of needs and organizations. All plans include virtual patching, DDoS protection, and TLS encryption. This makes Fastly Next-Gen WAF suitable for organizations of any size.

Fortinet is a cybersecurity company that offers a range of firewalls, endpoint security, and intrusion detection systems. Their web application firewall, FortiWeb, is an advanced solution that defends web applications and APIs against OWASP Top 10 threats, DDOS attacks, and malicious bot attacks. FortiWeb is supported by FortiWeb Cloud Threat Analytics, an intuitive ML-based tool that can effectively identify attack patterns across an environment, then provide actionable intelligence. FortiWeb Cloud Threat Analytics can also perform security posture scanning to provide recommendations on how firewall configuration settings can be improved; this reduces the chance of false positives. Any attack data aggregated is then cross-referenced across Fortinet’s entire customer base – this access to a large dataset increases the chances of identifying new threats. The solution also provides incident risk prioritization and workflow integration, with recommended threat-hunting playbooks. Finally, it offers protected WAF throughputs and rapid traffic encryption and decryption.

FortiWeb can be deployed in physical appliance, virtual appliance, hosted, or in the cloud. We would recommend this solution for medium to large enterprises that require an effective and robust firewall solution.

Google Cloud Armor is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect Google Cloud deployments from threats including DDoS attacks and application-level threats like XSS and SQL injection. Key features include customizable and preconfigured security policies for application protection, a robust rules language for defining prioritized rules, and preconfigured WAF rules that cover a wide range of attack signatures. Additionally, it offers advanced threat intelligence capabilities and Adaptive Protection for detecting and mitigating Layer 7 DDoS attacks. Users can also subscribe to the Cloud Armor Enterprise edition, which further enhances protection with always-on DDoS defenses and access to extensive WAF rules.

Google Cloud Armor supports hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. It’s straightforward to deploy and manage, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes, and its security policies can be manually configured to fit specific requirements or utilized through preconfigured settings for quicker deployment. Overall, Google Cloud Armor is ideal for organizations deploying extensive applications on Google Cloud, in hybrid settings, or across multiple clouds, requiring robust, customizable threat protection.

Imperva is a cybersecurity company with a focus on data and application security for both on-prem and cloud environments. The Imperva Cloud WAF is a cloud-based web application firewall that offers comprehensive security for active and legacy applications, APIs, microservices, cloud apps, containers, and third-party apps. It is designed with “out-of-the-box” functionality, ensuring fast setup and automated protection. By leveraging data from the Imperva Research Labs, Imperva Cloud WAF offers robust protection while reducing false positives. As well as blocking OWASP Top 10 attacks, Imperva’s Cloud WAF uses behavioral analysis in conjunction with expert knowledge from the Imperva Research Labs team to detect attacks that don’t match known malicious patterns. These include cross-site scripting, illegal resource access, and remote file inclusion. The platform’s identification engine profiles all incoming traffic at the edge in real-time, accurately determining whether traffic is legitimate or malicious before it can reach the web application. 

Imperva Cloud WAF offers a range of deployment options to suit any environment, including SaaS WAF, WAF gateway, and cloud WAF, and is available as a physical or virtual appliance. The solution offers an intuitive web interface that’s easy to use and navigate, and is protected by 2FA. With that in mind, we recommend Imperva Cloud WAF for any organization looking for an ML-powered, user-friendly WAF. For organizations that require a little more support, Imperva also offers a managed version of their WAF.

NetScaler’s Web Application Firewall utilizes multiple threat research sources to offer powerful protection against known and unknown attacks, including OWASP Top 10 and zero-day threats. The platform’s hybrid security model uses pre-configured, customized signature rules for pattern matching to block unwanted traffic, as well as positive security checks to enforce admins-defined security policies and defend against application-layer attacks. In addition to this, NetScaler’s WAF offers signature protections for known vulnerabilities, distinguishes between good and bad bots to block malicious traffic, prevents spam requests from known malicious IPs, and applies automated security checks even whilst applications are being developed and deployed. 

Built into the NetScaler platform, NetScaler’s Web Application Firewall offers cloud and on-prem deployment options. Thanks to its powerful features, quick scanning, and scalability, we recommend this solution to larger enterprises looking to defend hundreds or even thousands of applications.