Managed Web Security for Agencies: A Practical Playbook
Most agencies already know retainers are the path out of the feast-or-famine cycle. What is less obvious is how much headroom there is to improve retainer economics by bundling the right “always-on” services into care plans, then standardizing delivery.
One useful benchmark: The Nimbus “Agency Retainer Report” found that agencies reported retainer profit percentages in the 21–30% range, and that average monthly retainer pricing spans roughly $330 to $4,000 depending on the segment. The same report highlights how frequently agencies are still iterating: 74% said they frequently amend their retainers, which is a strong signal that packages are not fully productized yet. It also explicitly ties retainers to “security of earnings” and “quality of earnings”, which matters if you ever think about long-term stability or valuation.
Security is a natural care-plan add-on because threats do not arrive as “projects”. They arrive continuously, across every site in your portfolio. The challenge is that WAF operations can be noisy and skill-heavy. Verizon’s WAF Benchmark Report points to false positives and a lack of internal skills as persistent WAF management problems, and it includes “leverage third-party/managed services” as one of the ways organizations want WAF management to improve.
This playbook shows agencies how to turn that reality into a clean, scalable offer: Managed Web Security as a care-plan tier, anchored around a WAF, bot defense, DDoS protection, monitoring, and client-ready reporting.
1) Define the offer in agency language: what “Managed Web Security” means
There is a massive disconnect in how we talk about security, and it is hurting your ability to sell it.
When you mention a “WAF” to a client, they are asking an emotional question: “Is my business safe?” When you mention a “WAF” to your dev team, they are seeing a logistical nightmare: “Great. More alerts, more tickets, more work.”
To build a profitable security retainer, you have to bridge that gap. You need to stop selling the tool (which sounds like a commodity) and start selling the outcome (which sounds like value).
The Model: You Sell; We Run. This is an agency-led service powered by AppTrana SOC. Your agency owns the client relationship and the revenue. AppTrana owns the alerts, the rule-tuning, and the 24/7 monitoring.
How to Position It to the Client
Your positioning should read like a high-value upgrade to their Care Plan, not a boring technical pitch.
Promise these four things:
- “We keep your revenue engine online and fast.”
- “We stop hacks and abuse at the door, before they ever hit the websites.”
- “We filter out attacks without ever blocking your legitimate customers.”
- “We give you a monthly report you can actually understand and forward to your stakeholders to prove the site is safe.”
Defining the Offer (For Your Team & Your Sales Process)
“Managed Web Security” is a recurring service designed to protect your agency’s margins as much as the client’s site.
Here is how you should define the scope of this retainer:
- It eliminates margin-killing “fire drills.”We sell the reduction of avoidable emergency work. AppTrana SOC acts as the shield preventing hacked site cleanups, incident firefighting, and panic during sudden traffic spikes.
- It protects the asset you built. For your eCommerce and lead-gen clients, uptime is revenue. This retainer ensures that the conversions you designed the site to capture actually happen.
- It cuts the operational noise. Your team should not waste time chasing ghosts. AppTrana filters out the distractions. We reduce false positive investigations and stop bots from driving up server load (and generating “site is slow” complaints) so your devs can focus on building.
- It solves the “Invisible Value” problem. Security is hard to sell because it is invisible until it fails. This retainer produces proof the client can see. AppTrana provides the data for your monthly security reporting, plain-English incident summaries, and a log of what changed and why.
2) The Modern Threat Reality for Agency Portfolios
We need to look at what your care plans are actually being judged on today.
Agencies feel the pain of security incidents differently than a standalone business does. When a client site gets hit, the consequences expand outward immediately. The “blast radius” of a single compromise impacts four critical areas of your operation:
- Client Trust:Retention relies on their confidence in you.
- Support Bandwidth:Your queue clogs up with emergency tickets.
- Team Morale:Your staff loses nights and weekends to recover sites.
- Reputation:Your referral pipeline dries up if you become known as the agency with security issues.
The Patterns You Are Likely Seeing
If you look across your portfolio, you will recognize these recurring threats that cause friction for your team:
- Credential Stuffing: Attackers hammering CMS logins (like WordPress or Magento admin panels) with brute-force
- Checkout Abuse: Bots testing stolen credit cards on your eCommerce builds, ruining your client’s merchant reputation.
- Aggressive Scraping: Bots inflating bandwidth usage, slowing down page loads, and burning through origin server resources.
- Exploit Spikes: The immediate wave of attacks that follows a public vulnerability announcement for a popular plugin or theme.
- Layer 7 Floods: Traffic spikes that look like legitimate users but are actually attacks. These usually manifest as urgent “site is slow” support escalations.
The Strategic Bundle
This environment creates a compelling reason to bundle “care plans plus protection.”
The distinction is clear to the client. Maintenance keeps the house in order. Managed security ensures the doors stay locked.
3) Clarify What “Managed” Means to Clients
A WAF never stays static. It functions as a living policy layer that requires adaptation. You must adjust the rules constantly as:
- Sites undergo changes.
- New plugins get installed.
- Marketing campaigns spike traffic levels.
- Bots develop new tactics.
- Business logic evolves, such as updates to checkout flows or login behaviors.
This maintenance requirement creates the bottleneck where agencies often get stuck. The Verizon WAF Benchmark Report confirms this operational reality. WAF responsibilities frequently fall on staff who are already managing multiple other tasks. The data shows that teams struggle with skills constraints and the constant pressure to prevent false positives.
You need a crisp definition of “Managed” to make this a scalable service. You are providing ongoing operations along with the WAF.
The Division of Labor (Who Does What)
This is how you scale security without hiring more engineers. We handle the technical execution (The SOC), while you manage the client relationship (The Agency).
| Task | AppTrana SOC Role | Agency Role |
|---|---|---|
| Rule Tuning & Updates | Responsible: We adjust rules as bots evolve. | Informed: You get notified of changes. |
| False Positive Fixes | Responsible: We investigate and whitelist immediately. | Accountable: You ensure the client is happy. |
| Client Communication | Supporting: We provide technical answers. | Responsible: You manage the client updates. |
| Monthly Reporting | Inputs: We generate the data and logs. | Delivery: You package and send the final report. |
The Deliverables
With this model, Managed Web Security delivers:
- Rule Tuning: Zero false positives for the client. AppTrana handles exceptions and adjusts policies, so your team doesn’t have to learn regex and false positive testing.
- Continuous Monitoring: Clients’ applications are always available.AppTrana SOC spots the difference between false positives and real attacks 24/7.
- Incident Triage: Root cause analysis during incidents. AppTrana SOC provides the “what, why, and how” so you can explain incidents to clients clearly.
- Structured Onboarding: Block mode onboarding from Day 1. AppTrana SOC use a repeatable process to reach safe blocking mode quickly without breaking the site.
The Vendor Test: If you are evaluating WAF vendors to partner with, ask them one blunt question:
“If a legitimate customer gets blocked at 9:30 PM on a Saturday, who fixes it and how fast?”
What happens at 9:30 PM on a Saturday (with AppTrana SOC)
Your agency stays the client’s single point of contact. When a legitimate user is blocked or a site is under suspicious load, you escalate the issue to AppTrana SOC for immediate triage and mitigation.
To avoid back-and-forth, send a minimum context bundle:
- Site URL and environment (prod/staging)
- Time window (with timezone) and the affected path (login/checkout/admin/API)
- Any available signal (blocked screenshot, IP, user agent, request ID)
- Business impact (for example, “checkout blocked for customers”)
AppTrana SOC investigates, applies the necessary tuning or exception, and returns an agency-ready summary you can forward to the client: what happened, what changed, and what prevents recurrence. Your SLA commitment should match what you can operationalize with your SOC partner.
4) Build confidence on False Positive Mitigation
False positives are not a moral failing. They are a predictable outcome of generic rules meeting custom applications.
When you install a WAF, you are essentially placing a strict bouncer at the door. Sometimes that bouncer stops your best customers because they “looked suspicious.”
Most false positives originate from four specific friction points:
- Generic Signatures: Pre-written rules often collide with unique traffic patterns.
- Aggressive Sensitivity: High security settings prioritize blocking over access.
- Tight Rate Limiting: Limits set for bots often trip up real users during sales or viral events.
- Custom Business Logic: Valid actions, like complex search filters or checkout query strings, can look identical to attack patterns (like SQL injection) to a machine.
This is not a hypothetical problem. Major vendors document it extensively because they know it happens constantly.
- Cloudflare explicitly provides guidance for troubleshooting false positives in their managed rules. They recommend adding exceptions precisely because legitimate requests frequently get blocked. Their OWASP ruleset documentation notes that higher “paranoia levels” are aggressive and likely to block legitimate traffic.
- Wordfence warns users that strict rate limiting settings “may cause false positives” and block legitimate users depending on how a site is built. They also explain how pattern matching can accidentally flag non-malicious content, which is why they provide mechanisms like allowlisting and learning mode.
Why Agencies Pay the Bill
The tool vendors provide the documentation, but they don’t provide the labor. When a false positive blocks a client’s CEO or a major customer, the WAF did its job technically. However, your team must spend hours investigating logs to prove it. With AppTrana SOC, agencies can circumvent this problem.
5) Monitor Mode vs. Block Mode: A Deployment Playbook that Protects Credibility
Most clients ask a direct question: “Will your WAF configuration block attacks?”
They are paying for outcomes, not visibility. Onboarding an application in block mode is critical for this outcome.
The credibility risk for agencies rises when the implementation reality becomes “We will start in monitor mode for a while” without a crisp commitment to enforcement. Even if you use monitor mode briefly for validation, the promise must remain the same. Block mode is the end state, and it happens fast.
The Agency Commitment: Block Mode with Safe Validation
You can still use monitoring briefly, but you must position it as a behind-the-scenes validation step. It is not a posture the client is “buying.”
Phase 0: Pre-flight (Before Production Cutover) Goal: Reduce the need for extended monitor mode.
- Confirm the Environment:Audit the CMS/eCommerce stack, critical plugins, and known integrations.
- Map Critical Paths:Identify the non-negotiable user journeys like login, checkout, search, admin, and APIs.
- Identify “Known Goods”:List the traffic sources that must never be blocked, such as payment gateway callbacks, SSO, internal tools, partner IPs, and uptime monitors.
- Define Rollback Mechanics:Establish who can apply exceptions, the SLA for a response, and how changes are audited.
The Vendor Playbook: AppTrana Day 1 vs. Typical Platforms
Typical WAF/WAAP Platforms: Many platforms put the operational burden entirely on the agency. You decide when to enforce, you handle false positives via manual tuning cycles, and you often have to expand from “safe paths” outward over time. This can work if you have deep WAF expertise and strong operational discipline, but it increases the risk of delayed block-mode enforcement.
AppTrana (Managed Block Mode on Day 1). With AppTrana, you can position the playbook differently:
- 5-minute onboarding process: You just need to make a DNS change to onboard the websites.
- Default State: Block mode is active from Day 1.
- Operational Backstop: AppTrana SOC handles false positive monitoring and rapid adjustments.
- The Service Promise: AppTrana provides a “Zero False Positives Guarantee” and states we onboard in block mode immediately, backed by a penalty if legitimate traffic is blocked.
Agency Framing:
“We don’t need weeks of ‘watching logs’ to feel safe. We enforce on Day 1(with AppTrana SOC handling this in the backend) and rely on a managed operational promise to keep legitimate traffic flowing.”
A Simple Client-Facing Line:
“Block mode is the default. We may use a short internal validation window to fine-tune exceptions, but protection remains enforced from Day 1.”
6) Care Plan Packaging for Agencies: What to Include in Each Tier
A good care-plan bundle needs to meet three criteria. It must be easy to buy, easy to deliver, and easy to renew.
Here is a tiered structure that maps to the “Managed Web Security” value proposition.
Tier 1: Essential Security (Baseline Protection)
Best for: Brochure sites and smaller lead-gen sites.
This tier is for clients who just want to know the lights are on and the door is locked.
- Standard WAF Protection: Automated rules to block common vulnerability exploits.
- Block Mode Onboarding: Onboard applications in block mode.
- Basic Bot Filtering: Keeps the obvious scrapers away to save bandwidth.
- Uptime Monitoring: Immediate alerts if the site goes down.
- Monthly Reporting: A simple summary of “what we blocked.”
Tier 2: Business Security (The Agency Sweet Spot)
Best for: Business-critical sites, multi-step forms, and membership sites.
This is where you sell the “Managed” aspect. These clients cannot afford downtime or form spam.
- Everything in Essential.
- Managed Rule Tuning: We handle the false positives and exception requests.
- Vulnerability Remediation: Autonomous vulnerability remediation tied to an SLA.
- Rate Limiting & Abuse Controls: Tuned specifically for the site’s traffic patterns.
- Priority Response SLA: A guaranteed fast track for “legitimate user blocked” issues.
- Quarterly Review: A strategy call to review the report and adjust settings.
Tier 3: eCommerce Security (Revenue Protection)
Best for: WooCommerce, Magento, and custom checkout flows.
For these clients, security issues directly equal lost money. Focus on protecting the transaction path.
- Everything in Business.
- Checkout & Login Defense: Focused protection against credential stuffing and carding attacks.
- Aggressive Bot Management: A stronger posture to prevent inventory hoarding or price scraping.
- DDoS Resilience: Enhanced focus on performance protection during traffic spikes.
- High-Touch Reporting: Bi-weekly or monthly reports with specific incident breakdowns.
Pricing & Margin Math
Treat Managed Web Security like a product with unit economics per site. Your gross margin per site (per month) is:
Gross Margin % = (P – (V + I)) / P
Where:
P = what you charge the client per site per month
V = your platform + SOC cost per site per month (kept private, varies by vendor and partner terms)
I = your internal delivery cost per site per month = (delivery minutes per site per month / 60) × your fully loaded hourly cost
A simple rule of thumb (pure math, no vendor pricing required):
If you price at 2× your combined cost base (V + I), you make 50% gross margin.
If you price at 2.5× your cost base, you make 60% gross margin.
If you price at 3× your cost base, you make ~67% gross margin.
Index example:
If your combined cost base (V + I) is 100 units per site per month, price at 200 units for 50% margin, and 250 units for 60% margin.
Why the AppTrana SOC model protects margins:
Because AppTrana SOC handles rule tuning, false positive fixes, and 24/7 monitoring, your internal delivery time per site stays low. That keeps I small, protects margins, and makes the tier scalable across 10, 50, and 100+ sites.
Market Proof: The Model Exists
You are not reinventing the wheel here. Major players confirm that agencies buy multi-site security. They have plans that openly market an agency offering that emphasizes managing security for 10 to 1,000+ websites through a centralized dashboard. If they can sell scalable security management to agencies, you can sell it to your clients.
7) Delivering Managed Security at Scale Without Hiring a Security Engineer
The goal is simple. You need to operationalize this service for 10 sites today and 100 sites tomorrow without breaking your current team.
We achieve this by treating AppTrana SOC as your backend security division.
7.1 The Core Operating Workflow (Ticket-to-Resolution)
This workflow handles incidents without requiring your team to learn regex or analyze packet logs.
- Detection: The client reports an issue (e.g., “a user is blocked”) or your team detects an anomaly.
- Classification: Your support team tags the ticket. Is it a potential false positive, suspicious traffic, or a general question?
- Escalation: The request is automatically forwarded to AppTrana SOC. You only need to provide minimal context, such as the IP address or the specific URL involved.
- Investigation & Fix: AppTrana SOC investigates the logs, tunes the rules, and applies the mitigation.
- The “Agency-Ready” Response: AppTrana sends back the resolution. We provide the technical action taken, the reason for the block, and a plain-English explanation you can paste directly to the client.
- Close the Loop: Your team updates the client and closes the ticket.
7.2 The Onboarding SOP (Repeatable Checklist)
Consistency is the only way to scale. Use this standard procedure for every new site.
- Infrastructure Prep: Verify DNS settings and SSL certificate validity.
- Critical Path Mapping: Identify the money pages. Login, checkout, search, admin panels, and key APIs.
- Integration Audit: List the external tools that need access, such as payment gateways, CRM forms, and CDNs.
- Baseline Window: Run a short, time-boxed monitoring period to catch obvious issues.
- Go-Live: Activate block mode. Ensure you have the SOC monitoring the transition and a clear rapid rollback path defined.
7.3 The Monthly Cadence That Keeps Renewals Sticky
Security is invisible until you report on it. You need a rhythm that proves value every month.
Input (AppTrana SOC to Agency): Every month, AppTrana provides you with the raw intelligence. We send you data on top attacks prevented, specific tuning actions we took, and recurring noise patterns we silenced.
Output (Agency to Client): You translate that data into a value statement. Your report tells the client:
- “Here is what we blocked.”
- “Here is how many vulnerabilities we remediated”
- “Here is what we changed to keep you safe.”
- “Here is what it means for your business.”
Quarterly Business Review (QBR): Use this session to upsell. Review risk posture trends and discuss tier expansions for growing sites.
7.4 The Minimum Staffing Model
You do not need to hire a security engineer to sell this service.
What you need:
- A Named Owner:Assign an Ops Lead, CTO, or Delivery Manager to own the vendor relationship.
- A Simple SOP:A clear escalation path for your support team.
- A Reporting Habit:A scheduled process to send the monthly value reports.
AppTrana SOC carries the operational heavy lifting. AppTrana SOC acts as the engineer so you can focus on being the agency.
8) Tool Selection Guide: How to Choose the Right Approach
Your stack choice is not just a technical decision. It dictates the service model you are selling and the workload your team will inherit.
You should select the approach that aligns with your agency’s internal capabilities.
Option A: Plugin-Based Firewall (e.g. Wordfence)
Best for: Single sites or agencies with low volume.
The Reality: These tools are easy to install because they live inside the CMS environment your team already knows. The UI is familiar, and the setup is quick.
The Trade-off: The tuning burden falls entirely on you. Because the WAF runs at the application level, it consumes server resources. Wordfence documents their “learning mode” and allowlisting mechanisms extensively. While helpful, this documentation signals the ongoing tuning work your team must perform to prevent false positives.
- Pros: Easy to install, familiar interface.
- Cons: Can create false positives, tuning is your responsibility, difficult to manage at a multi-site scale.
Option B: Edge WAF / CDN (e.g. Cloudflare, Sucuri)
Best for: Agencies prioritizing performance and broad compliance.
The Reality: This is the standard for high-performance sites. You get protection at the edge, meaning bad traffic never hits the origin server. It offers centralized policy control and broad coverage.
The Trade-off: You still own the configuration. Cloudflare explicitly documents how to troubleshoot false positives in managed rules and recommends adding exceptions when legitimate requests get blocked. This is the practical, operational work your team must plan for in your retainer pricing.
- Pros: Performance benefits, broad protection coverage, central control.
- Cons: Still requires manual exception handling and rule maintenance.
Option C: Fully Managed WAF Service (e.g. AppTrana)
Best for: Agencies selling outcomes rather than tool resale.
The Reality: This approach offloads the technical execution. It is designed to reduce ticket volume and reach safe blocking mode faster without requiring you to hire a security engineer. The Verizon WAF Benchmark Report highlights a growing appetite for managed services specifically to address skills gaps and operational pain.
The Trade-off: You are relying on a partner, so vetting is critical. You must validate their SLAs, understand their escalation paths, and ensure their reporting quality matches what you promised your client.
- Pros:Fewer tickets, faster time to enforcement, removes the need for in-house security skills.
- Cons:Requires strict vetting of SLAs and reporting standards.
A Simple Decision Rule
If you want to sell tools, choose Option Wordfence or Cloudflare. If you want to sell outcomes, choose AppTrana.
9) Client-Facing Reporting: The Retention Engine Inside Your Care Plan
Clients renew care plans when they can see the work and understand the value. If they do not see the shield, they assume they do not need it.
Your monthly report serves one purpose. It proves that the fee they pay you is cheaper than the cost of the attacks you stopped.
Structure the report as a pyramid. Start with a one-page executive summary, then provide the technical detail behind it.
The One-Page Executive Summary
Goal: Give the client a “Board-Ready” slide they can paste into their own internal presentations.
- Availability: Highlight uptime stats, any anomalies detected, and confirmation that the site remained reachable.
- Protection: Summarize the volume of attacks blocked, the top attack categories, and any significant bot activity trends.
- Vulnerability Remediation (The “Virtual Patch” Value): This is your high-value differentiator. List the vulnerabilities detected by the scanner and confirm they were immediately “virtually patched” by the WAF.
- Example line: “We detected 2 critical vulnerabilities this month. The SOC applied a virtual patch immediately, keeping the site safe while your dev team schedules the permanent code fix.”
- Changes Made: Document the work. List key rule tuning adjustments and exceptions added. This proves the service is managed, not static.
- Action Items: Keep this short. Only list things the client explicitly needs to approve or fix.
The Detailed Appendix (For Technical Stakeholders)
Goal: Provide the evidence that backs up the summary.
- Event Samples: Logs of specific SQL injection or XSS attempts.
- Affected URLs: Which parts of the site were targeted?
- Mitigation Actions: Exactly which rule triggered the block? How many attacks were blocked by virtual patches?
- False Positive Resolution: A timeline of any support tickets to show responsiveness.
The “Board-Ready” Standard
Agencies often lose clients because the reporting looks like a generic server log.
If you use AppTrana, leverage the fact that the reporting is designed to be “Audit-Ready.” Indusface case studies emphasize the need for reports that can be shared in business reviews. Frame your reporting this way. You are not just sending them data; you are giving them the materials they need to demonstrate compliance and security maturity to their own investors or stakeholders.
10) Commercials and Risk: The SOW Language You Should Not Ignore
This section protects your margins and your reputation. You need to define exactly what “Managed Security” means on paper so the client knows where your responsibility ends.
Set Scope Boundaries Clearly
Security retainers often suffer from scope creep. A client might assume “Managed Security” means you will fix every vulnerability in their custom code for free. You must correct that assumption in the contract.
What is included:
- WAF Operations: We handle the setup, configuration, and ongoing rule updates.
- Tuning: We adjust settings to reduce noise and prevent false positives.
- Vulnerability Remediation: We “virtually patch” vulnerabilities as per SLAs.
- Monitoring: We watch the perimeter 24/7 for anomalies.
- Basic Incident Triage: We identify what happened and apply the block.
What Is NOT Included (Unless Billable):
- App Code Fixes: If the WAF blocks an attack that targets a vulnerability in your custom plugin, we patch it virtually at the WAF level. We do not rewrite your PHP or JavaScript code to fix the root cause.
- Full Forensics: We provide incident summaries. We do not provide deep-dive forensic analysis for legal proceedings.
- Compliance Consulting: We provide security reports. We do not act as your PCI-DSS or HIPAA auditor.
Define Response Times for High-Risk Moments
You need specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the two moments that matter most to a client.
- Legitimate User Blocked: This is the highest priority. If a customer cannot checkout, you need a tight response time (e.g., “Response within 30 minutes, Mitigation within 60 minutes”).
- Suspected Active Attack: If the site is sluggish or under load, define how fast you will triage the issue.
Avoid Absolute Claims (The “Unhackable” Trap)
Never promise a client that their site is “unhackable” or “breach-proof.” No one can promise that.
Focus your language on Operational Outcomes:
- “We provide continuous monitoring.”
- “We guarantee a response time.”
- “We commit to a time-to-mitigate metric.”
- “We deliver transparent reporting.”
Include a Clean Liability Statement
Note: This is not legal advice. Consult your attorney.
As a practical matter, your contract language should mirror the reality of your vendor. Do not promise something your vendor cannot back up.
However, if your vendor offers strong guarantees, you should make that part of your commercial story.
The AppTrana Advantage: AppTrana explicitly includes a “Zero False Positives Guarantee” with a penalty clause and references a 100% uptime SLA.
You can leverage this in your own SOW. It allows you to offer a stronger guarantee to your client because you know the vendor is financially committed to backing it up. This turns a standard liability clause into a competitive sales advantage.
The Simplest Way to Start
You do not need to overhaul your entire agency business model to launch this. If you want to get this offer live in the next 30 days, start small and move fast.
Your 30-Day Launch Plan:
- Pick One Tier: Start with the Business Tier. It is the easiest sell because it addresses the pain points of your most valuable clients without the complexity of full enterprise custom setups.
- Pilot on 5–10 Sites: Do not roll this out to everyone at once. Select the “noisy” clients, the sites that generate the most support tickets or have a history of security anxiety.
- Track the Metrics that Matter: Ignore the vanity numbers. Measure false positive tickets (did they go down?), incident time spent (did you save hours?), and renewal expansion (did they say yes?).
- Standardize: Build the onboarding checklist and the monthly reporting template. Once your team can do it for 5 sites, they can do it for 50.
The biggest barrier to selling Managed Web Security is the fear that you will have to manage it yourself.
That is why AppTrana exists. We allow you to sell the “Managed” promise without hiring a security operations center. You get Day 1 block mode, a Zero False Positive guarantee, and the confidence that when a client asks, “Who is watching the site?” you have a real answer.
Ready to build your security retainer? Start your pilot with AppTrana today.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
No. In the AppTrana model, the SOC handles rule tuning, false positive handling, and ongoing policy adjustments. Your team focuses on client communication and delivery, not WAF operations.
You escalate the issue with basic context (URL, time, IP or request ID if available). AppTrana SOC investigates, applies an exception or tuning fix, and sends an agency-ready explanation you can forward to the client. In your contract, define this as the highest priority SLA event.
No. The intent of this service is enforcement in block mode, with a short internal validation window only when needed. The SOC back-end reduces the fear of breaking sites by monitoring and adjusting quickly.
It complements it. Maintenance keeps the site updated and stable. Managed Web Security reduces attack and abuse pressure and prevents incidents from becoming emergency work.
Many clients have tools but not outcomes. The difference is operational ownership. If your team has to investigate alerts, tune exceptions, and explain incidents, the service is not truly managed. AppTrana is positioned for agencies that want to sell a managed outcome with a SOC back-end.
Answer directly: your agency is the single point of contact, and AppTrana SOC monitors and manages the protection 24×7 in the background. You can also provide monthly reporting and incident summaries as proof.
You can package and sell it as your care plan tier while using AppTrana as the backend platform. Confirm any specific branding or reporting requirements during partner onboarding.
Managed Web Security reduces ongoing risk and blocks repeat abuse. If malware cleanup or forensic work is required, define it as a separate scope item unless your care plan explicitly includes remediation services.
January 21, 2026



