New 10 Best Web Application Firewall (WAF) – 2023

In Cybersecurity News - Original News Source is cybersecuritynews.com by Blog Writer

Post Sharing

Best Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides security to web apps by setting up some sets of rules (Firewall)

The security of Web Applications is a rising problem because open-source software vulnerabilities have been the cause of many major data breaches.

In August 2022, Streaming platform Plex suffered a data breach due to a lack of WAF protection impacting most of its users, approximately 20 million. Hence installation of WAF in any organization is highly recommended.

What is WAF Position in OSI Model?

These days the amount and scope of attacks against web applications have increased and are already at an alarming level. And because of all these attacks implementing a WAF becomes very important.

Cloud-based WAFs are inexpensive and protect web applications from many known vulnerabilities that can lead to data compromise.

To protect your applications and prevent attackers from exploiting this newly discovered vulnerability, there are several best WAFs that can patch vulnerabilities as soon as they are discovered.

Therefore, if you want to keep your web application servers more secure, you should implement a WAF on your network.

10 Best Web Application Firewall (WAF) in 2023

Best WAF Solutions Key Features
1. AppTrana Managed Web Application Firewall 1. Instant and Easy Setup 2. Active Bot Protection Management 3. Built-in Ruleset 4. Customized Ruleset 5. Comprehensive Threat Coverage 6. Virtual Patching
2. Imperva Cloud WAF 1. RASP(Runtime Application Self-Protection) 2. API Security 3. Advanced Bot Protection 4. DDoS Protection 5. Attack Analytics 6. Client-Side Protection
3. Cloudflare WAF 1. Denial-of-service attacks mitigated 2. Activity log 3. Top events by source 4. Events by service 5. Events summary
4. F5 Advanced WAF 1. Comprehensive F5 web application security 2. Cost-effective and easy-to-manage compliance 3. Streamlined out‑of‑the‑box security 4. Deployment flexibility for virtualized and private clouds 5. Stolen credential protection 6. Behavioral DoS 7. Proactive bot defense
5. Azure WAF 1. Easy Setup 2. REST API Support 3. Instant and Easy Setup 4. Improve visibility into security and analytics 5. Improves security and optimizes performance at the edge
6. Akamai Kona Site Defender 1. High configurability 2. Zero-second SLA 3. Actionable insights 4. API discovery & security 5. Flexible management 6. Adaptive & self-tuning 7. Network (IP/Geo) Edge Firewall 8. Advanced Web Security Analytics 9. Terraform, Open APIs, and CLI 10. SIEM Integration 11. Application-Layer DoS Protection (Rate Controls) 12. Kona Site Defender Emerges as Akamai’s Next WAAP Solution: 13. App & API Protector
7. Fortinet FortiWeb 1. Web application security 2. Bot defense 3. Api discovery and protection 4. Soc operations 5. Regulatory compliance
8. Barracuda WAF 1. Cloud Native for modern workload 2. Agile-friendly and DevOps ready 3. API and mobile app protection 4. Stop Bad Bots 5. Ensure protection from Web Attacks and DDoS 6. Automate and orchestrate security
9. Sucuri WAF 1. Virtual Patching and Hardening 2. Block DDoS Attacks 3. Protected Pages 4. IP Allowlisting 5. Application Profiling 6. Signature Detection
10. AWS WAF 1. Blocks Malicious Bots 2. Protection against common Vulnerabilities 3. Easy and Quick to implement 4. REST API 5. Intelligent Threat Mitigation

10 Best Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions 2023

  • AppTrana Managed WAF
  • Imperva Cloud WAF
  • Cloudflare WAF
  • F5 Advanced WAF
  • Azure WAF
  • Akamai Kona Site Defender
  • Fortinet FortiWeb
  • Barracuda Web Application Firewall
  • Sucuri WAF
  • AWS WAF

1. AppTrana Managed WAF

AppTrana

AppTrana Managed WAF provides easy-to-use dashboards and other important information to help you deal with situations (attacks).

AppTrana features behavior-based DDOS attack detection that provides comprehensive protection against advanced DDOS attacks.

AppTrana powers your website’s content delivery network with distributed global edge locations. Provides continuous scanning so you can manage real-time risk monitoring. You can also schedule scans to run automated or manual penetration tests.

AppTrana has multiple experts monitoring the tool as an extended team to improve web application security.

Meet governance and compliance requirements such as PCI-DSS. This tool protects you from attacks that go beyond the OWASP Top 10, including API abuse, malicious bots, and advanced rate limiting.

AppTrana
Pros Cons:
Configuration is Very Simple, and it contains all the required features custom rules in the firewall can have more features.
Very affordable cost.

AppTrana – Free Demo

2. Imperva Cloud Web Application Firewall

Imperva Cloud WAF

Imperva Cloud WAF provides automated policy creation and rapid rule propagation capabilities to enhance web application security and make DevOps work more efficiently with third-party code while significantly reducing all threats Mitigate.

Defending from the application’s runtime environment Real-time attack detection protects web applications from external attacks and injections, reducing vulnerability backlogs.

API endpoints are automatically protected from the moment they are exposed, protecting all exploitable points in your web application.

Block traffic at the edge to ensure uptime and ensure business continuity without compromising performance.

Protect your on-premises or cloud-based assets, whether hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure, or the Google public cloud. The Imperva WAF comes in two variations.

  • SaaS WAF
  • WAF Gateway or Cloud WAF

SAAS WAFs are very quick and easy to adapt and implement. It’s all managed by Imperva, saving you money and time, so the amount of work is minimal.

Deploy WAF exactly where you need it (physical or virtual appliance) with WAF by Gateway or Cloud WAF. Determine how to protect your applications with dynamic profiling and attack intelligence.

Imperva Cloud WAF
Pros: Cons:
Fewer False Positive Web Application Firewall slows down sometimes
Wide Range of features

3. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Cloudflare WAF

Cloudflare is a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Web Application and API Protection (WAAP).

Cloudflare has four plans:

  • free
  • pro
  • business
  • enterprise

Cloudflare WAF recently introduced machine learning to improve WAF security. New detections are available in early access for Enterprise, Pro, and Biz customers.

However, this offer is not yet generally available. There is a waiting list to take advantage of this offer until it is generally available. With the help of machine learning, security has improved significantly, with three main benefits:

  • Machine learning algorithms attempt to create patterns based on incoming traffic and are evaluated based on which attacks claim.
  • Recognition is based on feedback and patterns, so it improves over time and improves over time. Data and feedback are also managed on all Cloudflare traffic. As a result, all companies using Cloudflare have the same level of security.
  • Machine learning engines detect anomalies and workarounds faster than human researchers can.
Cloudflare WAF
Pros: Cons:
Load Balancing is present. Third-party Integration poses a problem.
Technical Support is fast to response The report could be more granular.

4. F5 Advanced WAF

F5 Advanced WAF

F5 Advanced WAF protects against the most common attacks against apps without updating the apps themselves.

F5 AWAF has many built-in policy templates to provide better and faster control to protect common applications. AWAF can automatically create security policies based on observed traffic patterns. Users can also create their own policies to protect web applications.

F5 AWAF integrates positive and negative security models to block known and unknown threats.

By using a load balancer across multiple servers, SAAS F5 AWAF provides exceptional availability.

F5 AWAF encrypts data at the app level to protect your business from all types of man-in-the-middle attacks and data exfiltration malware.

AWAF works across F5’s platform portfolio, from Virtual Edition (VE) protecting Virtual Private Cloud applications to on-premises deployments installed on BIG-IP and VIPRION appliances with multi-line card enclosures.

AWAF F5 provides availability for both on-premises and cloud-based or a hybrid of the two applications by mitigating attacks.

F5 Advanced WAF
Pros: Cons:
It is a very lightweight tool. Not Compatible with multiple cloud environments needs to be improved.
It has many new features. Deployment of the tool is complex.

5. Azure WAF

Azure WAF

Azure WAF is a cloud-based service, so it’s easy to get up and running in less than 2 minutes. Block malicious attacks and gain full visibility into your environment. This protects your application from common attacks such as SQL injection and XSS.

Azure WAF Security is extremely easy to deploy as it does not require additional software agents. You can then customize or define new rules to suit your security needs.

Deploy Azure WAF on Azure Front Door for advanced security, scalability, and faster app delivery for global users. This increases the availability of your web application.

You can consolidate Azure Web Application Firewall logs and reports and collect plain text data to debug issues later.

Azure WAF provides full REST API support for automating the work of DevOps processes.

Using the Azure WAF detection engine in combination with an updated rule set reduces the number of false positives.

Azure Application Gateway WAF v2 SKU offers autoscaling, zone redundancy, and static VIP support. These gateways also offer improved performance, faster deployment and configuration update times, header rewriting, and custom WAF rules.

Azure Web Application Firewall
Pros Cons
Automation and control are very easy to use. Proxy forwarding could be improved.
The dashboard is interactive. Deployment is complex.

6. Akamai Kona Site Defender

Akamai Kona Site Defender

Akamai has been named a WAAP Magic Quadrant™ Leader for the sixth consecutive year by Gartner®.

Akamai Kona solves the latest in his WAAP problems with automated, adaptive, cloud-agnostic security.

Reduce overhead and false positives by using machine learning to self-tune and deliver dynamic protection with Akamai Kona.

Akami’s is the first edge-based WAAP with API detection. This allows you to stay up to date with new, unknown, and changing APIs.

This WAF provides continuous real-time monitoring with interactive dashboards and alerts. All protection can be easily automated. Instantly stop network-level DDoS attacks. Respond to application-layer attacks in seconds.

Complex environments can be controlled and handled easily and efficiently with flexible operation.

Akamai Kona Site Defender
Pros Cons
Can create custom rules. High Cost.
 The scalability of the tool is very good. The generation of the Report could be improved.

7. Fortinet FortiWeb

Fortinet FortiWeb

FortiWeb, Fortinet’s Web Application Firewall, provides protection to attacks that target known and unknown vulnerabilities to your Web Application.

FortiWeb is available in many different form factors to meet your needs ranging from entry-level hardware appliances to sophisticated VM options that be incorporated into the latest cloud environments.

Hardware Appliances:

FortiWeb appliances are faster due to the use of multi-core processor technology combined with hardware-based SSL tools.

Virtual Machines:

The virtual version of FortiWeb can be deployed on different VM platforms.

Public Cloud:

FortiWeb is also available in all the major public cloud providers, including AWS(On Demand), MS Azure(BYOL(bring your own license)), Oracle and Google.

Container Appliances:

For the container environment, FortiWeb container appliances is present to secure your workload and data in a centralized environment.

SAAS:

FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is a SaaS cloud-based web application from many known OWASP Top 10, zero-day threats and other application layer attacks. As it is a SAAS, hence it is very easy and quick to set up.

FortiWeb gives regulatory compliance requirements related to public-facing applications, including PCI-DSS requirements.

FortiWeb consolidates raw event data into a clear picture of the most significant threats.

FortiWeb also supports your mobile application by protecting the APIs that enable B2B communication.

Blocks malicious bot activity without hindering the working of legitimate bots which a particular business requires.

FortiWeb handles/blocks known and unknown(zero-day) threats without excessive management overhead.

Pros Cons
The report is well-defined. GUI is limited.
Setup is very easy. Support team delays in replying.
PCI compliance is followed well. The incident Report should stay a little longer than it does.

8. Barracuda WAF

Barracuda WAF

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service puts you in complete control. WAF-as-a-Service gives you a complete set of features and capabilities to ensure total application security.

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service protects your entire attack surface, including REST APIs and API-based applications. API Discovery automatically create the required rulesets for the API, reducing the admin overhead.

Barracuda WAF-as-a-service offers protection to both XML and JSON APIs, Including protection against parser and DDoS attacks.

Barracuda WAF-as-a-service offers Advanced Bot Protection that uses machine learning to continually improve its ability to spot and block bad bots.

This Web Application Firewall provides full-spectrum protection from Layer 3-7 DDoS, and comprehensive DDoS protection is built in, with no extra charges.

Barracuda WAF-as-a-service’s advanced vulnerability scanners constantly monitor your whole deployment for vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities found in the apps that are still in development, can be resolved automatically or with just one click.

Barracuda WAF-as-a-service generates detailed logs automatically and provides custom reports on demand, tackling the problem of demonstrating compliance and time consumed in it.

The granular visibility of the application traffic helps you to monitor whatever happening and see the important point to take action on and strategically plan for.

Barracuda WAF
Pros Cons
Good Response Time Reporting can be a little difficult.
 Spam Emails are blocked if they don’t pass the analysis Initial setup can be a little difficult.

9. Sucuri WAF

Sucuri WAF

Your site is constantly updated for patches and server rules to prevent attackers.

Global Anycast network and Web Application Firewall, there is no downtime. And with the help of WAF’s intrusion prevention system, the vulnerabilities can be patched and threats can be blocked easily.

There is an option for making some pages more secure by adding passwords, a captcha, 2FA or IP whitelisting, and many more.

All HTTPS web traffic is inspected before reaching your server. With heuristic and signature-based techniques, we block malicious requests and attack patterns.

All the HTTP/HTTPS traffic is monitored and malicious requests are blocked on the basis of signatures and heuristics.

Traffic is also blocked on the basis of your site profile and technology, whichever request doesn’t match your site’s technology or profile will be blocked.

Sucuri WAF
Pros Cons
Enhances the speed of the website using CDN speed enhancement The support team responds late.
Sucuri has Website Backups Chat Support is useless.
Setup is Easy
Better logging with the use of the free plugin

10. AWS WAF

AWS WAF

AWS WAF can be configured and used to stop common attacks such as SQL injection and XSS and to control bot traffic. You can create a web access control list using a wizard in the AWS WAF console.

AWS WAF exposes Amazon API Gateway REST APIs, Application Load Balancers, AWS AppSync GraphQL APIs, or Amazon Cognito User Pools.

AWS Web Application Firewall can be used to protect applications hosted in Amazon ECS containers. Amazon ECS is a highly scalable and fast container management service that makes it extremely easy to run, stop, and manage Docker containers in your cluster.

AWS WAF has intelligent threat mitigation and can also implement CAPTCHA rules. AWS WAF Fraud Control Account Takeover Prevention (ATP).

AWS WAF manages both friendly and malicious bots. The core functionality is provided by rule groups managed by Bot Control.

Validating client session and getting client’s AWS Web Application Firewall token in the web request.

AWS WAF
Pros Cons
Web Traffic is managed properly. Technical support is costly
Making new custom rules are easy to make and implement. Technical support responds late

AWS WAF

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is Web Application Firewall (WAF)?

A firewall in the web application is simply a way to provide security to servers by setting up a set of rules that will help in filtering the traffic. In general, WAF will prevent from people entering/penetrating your web application and, keep the data on the server secure.

Do I need a WAF?

They are typically used as an additional layer between websites and the internet so that traffic can be intercepted and inspected before it reaches the website. Best Web Application Firewall prevents the web application(server) from a vast variety of attacks, most commonly the “OWASP Top 10“. The rules are pre-defined in WAF to prevent frequent attacks, and you can also customize the rules and add your own rules as well.

What are the Types of Web Application Firewalls?

There are three types of WAF:

Network-Based WAF: This type of WAF is set up between the internet and your server to monitor traffic for malicious activity. Network-based WAFs are primarily hardware-based, with some software-based exceptions. Hardware-based requires a physical device and costs more, so you can choose one or the other based on your budget.
Cloud-Based WAF: Cloud-based WAFs monitor traffic flowing through cloud-based firewall providers and reside in the cloud. It’s the cheapest and easiest to set up because it’s cloud-based and mostly provider-managed. In addition, since it is managed by a third party (provider), it is automatically updated on a regular basis.
Host-Based WAF: A network-based WAF monitors traffic coming into the server, while a host-based WAF monitors traffic flowing through the server. And since host-based is primarily software-based, it can be customized for any server but requires additional configuration. While it is a cheap option, it is also difficult to implement.

Also Read

 Best Free Web Application Penetration Testing Tools

AWS Security Tools to Protect Your Environment and Accounts

SMTP Test Tools to Detect Server Issues & To Test Email Security

Online Penetration Testing Tools for Reconnaissance and Exploit Search

Advanced Endpoint Security Tools

Best SysAdmin Tools

Best Free Penetration Testing Tools

10 Dangerous DNS Attacks Types and The Prevention Measures

Free Forensic Investigation Tools

Bug Bounty Platforms for Every White Hat Hackers

Best Search Engines That You Can Use Instead of Google