Cyber thieves and businesses play a never-ending game of cat and mouse in the world of IT. In the IT field, we must always be one step ahead of the hackers. Firewalls have significantly enhanced Internet security. However, there are still many cyber security dangers, and progress has been made in the construction of firewalls to help safeguard businesses. Because who doesn’t like a nice acronym, this invention is known as Web Application Firewall, or WAF. We explained how a WAF works in a recent blog article, but what kind of businesses might benefit from utilizing one?
Which businesses may profit from a WAF?
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a tool for controlling web application access. As a result, most businesses would benefit from using a WAF, but let us give you some instances. For start-ups/re-launches, as well as when an existing customer/established firm wishes to make updates to their online application, we highly advocate implementing a WAF.
You may not know what a ‘typical’ traffic pattern looks like in the early stages of your business. After that, a WAF can figure out how valid traffic for that specific web application appears. Companies who already have a WAF may opt to redesign their web application at some point in the future. In this case, the program can learn traffic patterns in the same way it does in other cases. Customers may concentrate more on their core offering and don’t have to waste time finding out how the network is put together.
Major banks and financial organizations are among the existing users of a Web Application Firewall, since it is vital to safeguard their services from hackers. In truth, everybody with a web application that they feel is worth defending should use a WAF. This is done to provide high availability while also reducing the risk of data loss and corruption.
Why are we seeing a shift toward WAF?
When it comes to security and IT trends, it’s clear that more and more businesses are turning to the cloud. This has caused a paradigm change in the way people think about security. Companies and service providers are increasingly considering security from an application standpoint rather than a network one. You used to speak about firewalls, but now you talk about application firewalls.
This ‘application viewpoint’ holds true for cybercrime as well. Many assaults currently occur at the application level rather than at the network level. The program itself is being targeted by cybercriminals. You may more easily defend yourself against the most prevalent attack types, such as cross-site scripting and SQL injections, using a Web Application Firewall.
Why don’t all firms utilize WAF and application firewalls, which seem like the “Holy Grail”?
There has been one method of looking at security in the past. And the focus has been on how to defend the network rather than the application itself. We are now through a paradigm change.
Furthermore, the technical capacity to defend the application has only been around for a short time, and we expect to see more enterprises choose for WAF in the future. Especially now that many businesses are migrating their IT infrastructure to the cloud.
