Gone are the days of monolithic web applications. Modern computing architectures are more decentralized. Developers leverage API, clouds, containers, and microservices to build agile and innovative apps.
Such dynamic and distributed digital environments bring big risks too. They expand the attack surface. They increase opportunities for attackers to exploit and abuse your apps.
Legacy security tools simply don’t stand a chance. To protect your modern-day apps and APIs, you need WAAP (Web Application and API Protection).
What exactly is WAAP? Is it different from WAF? How to choose the best WAAP for your enterprise? Read on to find out.
What is WAAP?
WAAP is a specialized, multi-layered cloud security tool. It is specifically built for the protection of applications and APIs. It is stationed at your network’s outer edge. From this vantage position, it monitors and analyzes all incoming traffic and requests.
It takes intuitive action based on real-time logs, insights, and statistics.
WAAP is equipped to handle the latest threats facing modern applications and APIs. It protects you against
- Advanced bots
- Modern malware
- Complex DDoS threats
- New-age API security risks
- Zero days
WAAP and WAF: Are They Different?
Yes, very much so! WAAP and WAF are very different despite some similarities. They are placed on the network’s outer edge in front of the public side of apps and APIs. They observe, analyze and filter incoming traffic requests.
However, WAAP security expands the scope and security depth of your WAF solutions.
Why Do You Need a WAAP?
Web applications, APIs, and the entire digital landscape are fast advancing. Modern apps and APIs allow programmatic access to sensitive data. Plus, the nature of threats is evolving quickly. We have much more stealthy and complex attacks today.
And traditional WAFs find it hard to keep pace with the changing digital landscape. They rely on signature-based techniques to find and block bad requests. They use port-based blocking to stop threats. They can’t inspect encrypted traffic. All this makes traditional WAF solutions ineffective and unscalable.
You need WAAP security to defend yourself against today’s threats.
Top 5 Things to Consider in Choosing the Best WAAP
Comprehensive Capabilities
The best WAAP solutions will have the following capabilities:
- Holistic, Context-Aware, and Data Aware Protection for all kinds of
- Apps
- APIs
- Microservices
- Serverless functions, etc.
- Next-Gen WAF: Goes beyond signature-based techniques to find and block bad requests. It protects against known and emerging threats. It secures your apps using
- Granular traffic monitoring
- Behavioral analysis
- Intelligent automation
- Self-learning AI
- Deep analytics
- Global threat feeds
- Runtime Application Self-Protection protects against app and API attacks in real time. It is embedded into the app’s runtime domain.
- Advanced DDoS Protection: Secures against application layer, network, infrastructure, and multi-vector attacks. It offers instant, real-time, and ongoing protection against complex DDoS attacks.
- API Protection: Automated API protection prevents API endpoints from a wide range of threats, including OWASP Top 10 API. It includes essential API security features like positive security models, API gateway, rate limiting, API-specific anti-DDoS & bot policies, and API discovery.
- Protects Against Malicious Bots using
- Behavioral and pattern analysis
- Fingerprinting
- Workflow validation
Other vital capabilities to look for:
- Protection against abusive behavior, such as account takeovers
- Advanced rate limiting
- Client-side protection
- Load balancing
- Secure CDN
- Evasion countermeasures
- False positive management
- Visibility across architectures
The best WAAP offers visibility across architectures, preventing the problem of shadow IT. They take a risk-based approach, providing instant, real-time security. They amp up friction for bad actors and bots, not legitimate users. The best WAAP helps create frictionless digital experiences for your users at scale.
Solution Maturity
This decides how effectively your WAAP solution secures your apps and APIs. Mature WAAP solutions aren’t built from scratch. They are built using established WAF as their basis. This way, you will not miss out on key WAF capabilities such as
- Application security testing
- SIEM tools
- URL and form protection
- Anti-CSRF
- Cookie signing
- Real-time logging
- Log Retention
Use of Advanced Technology
The best WAAP solutions use the best-in-breed technology, such as
- Automation
- Self-learning AI
- Analytics
- Behavioral analysis
- Cloud computing
- Autotuning
This ensures improved scalability, flexibility, precision, and agility. This helps you to minimize manual interventions and tuning. Such a solution keeps learning and improving itself. It leverages global threat feeds and real-time insights to stop threats quickly.
Fully Managed Solution
The best WAAP solutions, like Indusface WAAP, are fully managed by certified security experts. Security experts create custom rulesets to manage risks better. This expertise augments technology to protect you from the most complex threats.
Easy to Deploy and Manage
Choose WAAP solutions that are easy to deploy and manage. It should offer a cohesive dashboard to monitor and manage your security posture.
Conclusion
Carefully evaluate and choose the right WAAP to keep improving your security posture.
