Why Managed WAF Is A Must For Businesses?

Businesses are looking to develop and grow with time and there are certain risks that would impact hugely and there are risks that may unexpectedly arise. A successful business is the one prepared to overcome these risks by being proactive. Cyber threats are a major risk for all businesses these days. Web Application Firewall (WAF) defends against bad traffic and malicious nodes and is the first level of shielding.

Web Application Firewall

As the name suggests firewall provides the initial level of protection. A WAF protects not just against existing vulnerabilities but also helps identify and track hackers who are sending traffic with hacking intent and use that for future threat intelligence and defense posture to secure a web application in the most cost-effective manner. Continuous monitoring helps stop bad traffic before it acts upon the application. The regular on-premises Web Application Firewall without management will provide a diminishing value of returns if the security policies are not managed and updated on a continuous basis with the changing landscape of the application behind it. So, the regular WAF in spite of being automated follows straightforward and fixed rules which will become more and more irrelevant without management. To overcome this issue a managed WAF is used that can hide the complexity of rules and its management from customers and provide them with application security to keep a business running.

The agility of systems is required to keep up with the dynamic nature of the environment, client preferences, and technological advancements. Cloud computing makes it a necessity for systems to be flexible thus a cloud WAF is a better option compared to a regular WAF. A simplified approach to the deployment of policies managed centrally by cloud WAF’s can reduce configuration errors and increase the overall effectiveness of the WAF. Centralized policy management will help in comparing, updating, and ensuring that the overall security is strong.

The Necessity to have a Managed WAF

While selecting a WAF there are many functionalities to be considered including automatic attack detection, Device ID and fingerprinting Behavioral analysis, and ease of management. In addition to this, the other things that need to be considered are the infrastructure and architecture of the network, detection methods, and effectiveness of the system, Reliability, availability, and performance.WAF of a business may fail irrespective of being regular or cloud-based due to many reasons and to avoid the failure is why a managed WAF is recommended. A managed WAF would help by providing the following benefits:

• Expertise knowledge and skills

A managed WAF has the advantage of expert knowledge and skills thus a WAF is deployed correctly.WAF is not left in a detection mode rather the logs are read regularly, monitored, and required action is taken.

• Prioritizing cybersecurity

Business leaders and employees may focus completely on the core business while the cybersecurity is taken care of by the certified experts in the case of a managed WAF. For example, WAF is left in detection mode and a customer on an e-shopping web application is unable to make a payment but needs an item urgently they would move to a competitor’s website and purchase the product rather than wait for the issue to be resolved. A managed WAF would prioritize the security of the web application by immediately blocking the attack thus, allowing the customer to purchase.

• Handle agility of the dynamic application

Advancements in technology and the changing needs of customers force the applications to be agile in nature. Applications need to be updated frequently according to the business requirements which involves a complex change management process. Expert security service providers like AppTrana ensure that the client systems ensure that change management is done efficiently.

• Dedicated time

Regular tuning and tweaking of the WAF are necessary to survive the diverse and dynamic nature of business. Thus, a person dedicated to managing a WAF with their time and expert knowledge and skills is essential for ensuring tight security. The lack of time and concentration is the major reason for the failure of WAF’s.

• Staying updated

Threats are already plentiful in existence and every day there are new ways of attacks happening globally. Managed WAF’s are updated regularly with the ability to identify the latest threats and block them. Regular firewalls inbuilt in the system did not need to be updated or changed frequently according to the environment but WAF’s require modifications and frequent updating.