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What Is a Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
2021-10-12 13:21:04| The Webmail Blog
What Is a Web Application Firewall (WAF)? chri6103 Tue, 10/12/2021 - 06:21 What Is a Web Application Firewall (WAF)? October 20, 2021 by Cody Johnson, Senior Strategic Programs Manager, Rackspace Technology Its hard to feel like you have a full grasp of cybersecurity, especially as threats are always evolving. However, becoming more familiar with cybersecurity solutions allows you to build a strong understanding of how cyberattacks work. I spoke to Adam Brown, Information Security Architect at Rackspace Technology, to have him explain exactly how a web application firewall (WAF) works in straightforward, no-frills language and what part it plays in the ever-changing cybersecurity world. What is a firewall? Lets begin with defining the firewall. Firewalls utilize what are known as access control lists (ACLs) to gate entry and control access to your web application server. And in this scenario, your web application server represents your online business. If you imagine a facility, firewalls should act as a gate security check and ensure no uninvited guests or goods get in. Legacy firewalls are like having a security guard sitting in a booth doing visual checks of people trying to access your premises. The check is only as sophisticated as a guard looking at cars and passengers from the booth. This first layer of security is packet filtering, with the car representing the data packets, or information, that is traveling through to reach the application. A WAF explained A WAF provides real-time protection by blocking bots, scrapers and crawlers from reaching your application. With a WAF, youll have less unwanted traffic, which translates to smoother online operation. Thinking of the metaphor mentioned above, the WAF operates in much the same way as a security inspector, but this time the inspector comes up close to the vehicle to perform a close inspection. And this is no cursory exterior once-over the inside of the car (or data packet in actuality) is examined like a crime scene. These checks are akin to application layer protocol validation. A WAF provides better web protection than an intrusion prevention system (IPS) alone as it has a broader scope of inspection options. Using the analogy from earlier, you can think of an IPS like a sniffer dog. If theres a substance in the car that the dog has been trained to find, the dog will become suspicious if they pick up a scent of that substance. The WAF is more sophisticated than that. It looks for everything and can detect the presence of everything regardless if it is hidden from sight or scentless. A WAF is most effective as one component of a defense-in-depth approach, which means using multiple layers of technology as part of your cloud security management program. Real-world use cases for a WAF A WAF can protect applications against known security threats like SQL injections, where attackers insert malicious code to manipulate existing data on your system. A successful attack of this nature can result in voided transactions, deleted data or sensitive data exposure. But if you have deployed a WAF, it uses input validation and database-level protections to prevent SQL injections. A WAF can also block credential stuffing. This is when stolen credentials are used to log in and launch an attack. The application may not be coded to recognize and prevent this type of attack, but with a WAF in place, it is safe and secure. A WAF can also spare you from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. In a DDoS attack, hackers overwhelm the application with requests. This results in the slowdown or complete shutdown of your application. And an application thats not available, or is performing poorly, usually translates into lost revenue. As threats are constantly evolving, the advantage of a WAF is that it can protect against unknown threats. It recognizes threats that use authorized protocols such as HTTP, while legacy firewalls cannot do this. Over time applications change, so a WAF needs to be maintained with rules and configuration options to ensure it provides the best level of defense. Take the next step Take the next step toward protecting your applications with our 15-question security self-assessment. Youll receive a professional consultation where a cloud expert reviews your results and provides recommendations on addressing security gaps. Recent Posts What Is a Web Application Firewall (WAF)? October 20th, 2021 Why Automated Application Testing Is the Key to Digital Transformation October 12th, 2021 How to Drive Continuous Innovation with Rackspace Elastic Engineering for Security September 30th, 2021 How to escape hyperscaler transfer fees September 30th, 2021 How businesses can combat complexities to become multicloud masters September 23rd, 2021 Links Solve: Thought Leadership Corporate Blog Newsroom Technical Blog Investor Relations
Tags: web
application
firewall
waf
Network Security Firewall Expert
2021-08-18 18:12:56| Space-careers.com Jobs RSS
HE Space is a successful international space company. For over 30 years, we have been supporting our customers with qualified experts in the field of engineering, science and administration. We are currently looking for a Network Security Firewall Expert to support our customer in Germany. Key Tasks and Responsibilities To support our customer in Germany The Contractor is required to provide consultancy for Firewall Management and Orchestration with the following responsibilities Management of security related equipment and links during operations and maintenance activities Provide service related to Network, Security and Compliance Adherence to the Anomaly Resolution and change management processes and implementation of the tasksactions assigned Review the customer firewall logs and rules to eliminate unnecessary firewall regulations Perform Onsite Virtual Workshop to derive requirements, and agree selection criteria Perform a market survey to identify which products would be the best viable options Perform a proscons tradestudy and present the results to the customer Support the implementation of the agreed firewall solutions in the customers facility Automate and orchestrate the security policies across firewalls Skills Experience You will have the following qualifications and relevant experience Masters degree in Software Engineering, IT or equivalent from an accredited university Experience in the design, implementation and maintenance of network and security systems Experience in complex systems requiring a high availability and high security needs in a 247 operating environment, preferably with large, distributed, heterogeneous IT environments Experience in obsolescence and compliance reengineering of legacy network systems with respect to security aspects Experience in market surveys and implementation of firewall orchestration management software, firewall rule audit and corrective actions Design and implementation of Network security anomaly detection Identification and implementation of DNS log management and analysis Experience using network analysis and management tools such as SolarWinds and Wireshark Experience in using network diagram software such as Visio Fluency in English is mandatory knowledge of another European language is an advantage. This job is located in Darmstadt. If you think you have what it takes for this job, please send your CV together with a letter of motivation both in English and in Word to Viktoria Panicharova, by clicking on the button Apply for this job quoting job DESC4604 before 08Sep21. An exciting and dynamic international working environment awaits you!
Tags: network
security
expert
firewall
Network Security Firewall Expert
2021-08-12 13:13:57| Space-careers.com Jobs RSS
Key Tasks and Responsibilities To support our customer in Germany The Contractor is required to provide consultancy for Firewall Management and Orchestration with the following responsibilities Management of security related equipment and links during operations and maintenance activities Provide service related to Network, Security and Compliance Adherence to the Anomaly Resolution and change management processes and implementation of the tasksactions assigned Review the customer firewall logs and rules to eliminate unnecessary firewall regulations Perform Onsite Virtual Workshop to derive requirements, and agree selection criteria Perform a market survey to identify which products would be the best viable options Perform a proscons tradestudy and present the results to the customer Support the implementation of the agreed firewall solutions in the customers facility Automate and orchestrate the security policies across firewalls Skills Experience You will have the following qualifications and relevant experience Masters degree in Software Engineering, IT or equivalent from an accredited university Experience in the design, implementation and maintenance of network and security systems Experience in complex systems requiring a high availability and high security needs in a 247 operating environment, preferably with large, distributed, heterogeneous IT environments Experience in obsolescence and compliance reengineering of legacy network systems with respect to security aspects Experience in market surveys and implementation of firewall orchestration management software, firewall rule audit and corrective actions Design and implementation of Network security anomaly detection Identification and implementation of DNS log management and analysis Experience using network analysis and management tools such as SolarWinds and Wireshark Experience in using network diagram software such as Visio Fluency in English is mandatory knowledge of another European language is an advantage. This job is located in Darmstadt. If you think you have what it takes for this job, please send your CV together with a letter of motivation both in English and in Word to Viktoria Panicharova, by clicking on the button Apply for this job quoting job DEHP4604 before 08Sep21. An exciting and dynamic international working environment awaits you!
Tags: network
security
expert
firewall
Do you need a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF)?
2021-05-03 21:24:02| The Webmail Blog
Do you need a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF)? nellmarie.colman Mon, 05/03/2021 - 14:24 Your application is crucial to the delivery of your solution or service and user experience is key. On top of that, customers have a short attention span so, if your app does not load fast enough or another solution is more appealing, users will go to the competition. Companies spend millions of dollars and work diligently to capture their users attention. Plus, they have to ensure the safety of the information gathered about their customers, the data generated by the service and the security of data systems deployed to provide the solution. With all the investment, how do you ensure your application is secure and delivered on time, with the user experience you expect? One key area that people overlook is cloud-based web application firewall (WAF). Without a WAF, your application may already be vulnerable to these attack vectors: Web exploits API abuse Availability attacks Bots, scrapers and crawlers But I have AWS, Azure, or GCP. Do I still need a cloud WAF? Yes! Cloud providers excel at offering compute solutions for their customers to deploy applications. But securing those applications is your responsibility. In addition, each provider has their own solution that works only for their platform. In contrast, cloud WAF solutions specialize in securing your application from end-to-end by providing a single solution for all your environments, no matter the scale, complexity or cloud provider you are deployed with. Lets take a look at how cloud WAFs protect your application and keep your data secure. Web exploits Very skilled attackers work to discover weaknesses in the code running the applications on the internet. Once vulnerabilities are discovered, they develop zero-day exploits which can be used against applications running the vulnerable code. Often, these hackers sell the exploits on the dark web and other forms for fun and profit. Malicious hackers then scan the entire internet for vulnerable applications. Once discovered, they can use the tools available on the dark web to steal your data and intellectual property and pilfer your customers data, credit card information or other personally identifiable information (PII). What makes this situation worse, commodity exploits are easy to search for and do not require any skill to execute. Even if your company has endpoint protection and intrusion detection, your application could still be vulnerable to web attacks. Deploying a cloud WAF is a simple solution to protect your applications against web exploits, including the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top ten threats which includes cross-site scripting, security misconfigurations and SQL injection attacks. API abuse Hackers are not just looking for vulnerabilities in your web applications they also target the systems that support your application. In most modern application development, the communication between systems is driven by an application programmable interface (API). And in 2020, 91% of enterprises experienced an API security incident. APIs are used for machines and programs to communicate with each other and enable the fast delivery users expect. Just as we rely on an application to deliver a service or solution, applications and mobile apps rely on APIs to deliver valuable information to their supporting systems. API attacks are growing in popularity. By deploying a cloud WAF, you can protect your mobile apps from attacks against their supporting systems and vital APIs such as lack of resources, rate limiting, broken authentication and other OWASP Top Ten Threats for APIs. Availability attacks Applications are also vulnerable to attacks against availability. For example, with denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, hackers launch massive assaults that flood your application and are capable of overwhelming even the best-designed solution. This can degrade or often impair your users experience. What makes this worse are the various styles of DoS that can be used. If you are deployed on-prem, then your internet bandwidth or network aggregation point could be overwhelmed by a Volumetric attack that saturates the network with bogus traffic like SYN floods or DNS amplification attacks. Many companies have discovered a way to mitigate Volumetric DDoS attacks by embracing digital transformation and migrating to a cloud provider like AWS, Azure or Google Compute. These providers offer security groups that allow users to block unwanted ports and protocols, similar to a stateful firewall. This strategy will prevent floods of bogus traffic from reaching your application, but it does not block traffic on the ports or protocols your application relies on. Adversaries have discovered techniques to launch attacks against the required ports and protocols with bogus application requests. This attack is called an application DDoS since the target is the application instead of the network. On-prem customers have very few solutions to defend themselves when both volumetric and application DDoS attacks are used in combination. With a cloud WAF, your application will be secure from both volumetric and application DDoS attacks. Cloud WAF DDoS mitigations are available for on-prem, cloud or hybrid environments. Bots, scrapers, and crawlers Once you have your application deployed and secured, you can focus on capturing your customers attention, right? Unfortunately, no. Scammers are looking to get any advantage they can get, and your service or solution is no different. Industries from shoe sales to concert venues have been impacted by bad bots, which are programs written to buy all of a hot-selling item before any consumers can. The scammers then resell the items later for a much higher price. Furthermore, a malicious competitor who wants to undercut your business may write a scraper to monitor changes to your site including deals or sales you have. Using these programs, scammers can steal your customer by offering similar items for slightly cheaper. Given the choice between two similar items, consumers will choose the lower price. To get an edge on the competition, companies invest heavily on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and marketing to improve their results on places like Google. The techniques and tactics used to maintain the top result are proprietary to every organization and form a basis of their intellectual property. The use of robots.txt is an industry best-practice and a great solution for well-behaving crawlers to know when and if to index your site, but malicious crawlers and adversaries write programs to steal your SEO and other trade secrets used to maintain top search results. Through the use of a cloud WAF, you can block blocks bots, scrapers and crawlers from hitting your application. The effect will be less unwanted traffic, a reduced cost on your infrastructure, a higher return on your marketing investment and a better overall customer experience. How Rackspace Technology can help At Rackspace Technology, our customers leverage our Managed Cloud WAF solution to secure their applications in the cloud, on-prem and in hybrid environments. With Managed Cloud WAF, our experts provide everything from security to application delivery, which allows our users to focus on running their business. Managed Cloud WAF is an easy way to deploy a global-scal
Tags: web
application
firewall
cloudbased
Cambodia mimics Chinas Great Firewall with new Internet Gateway
2021-02-18 01:00:00| Total Telecom industry news
Yesterday, the Cambodian government announced that it would be adopting what it called the National Internet Gateway as a method of monitoring and controlling all the data flowing into the country. Under the new policy, all local ISPs and telcos will be required to route traffic through the Gateway, where a central authority will take measures to “prevent and disconnect all network connections that affect national income, security, social order, morality, culture…read more on TotalTele.com »
Tags: internet
great
gateway
firewall