At Fortra’s Alert Logic, we often hear from people who find it challenging to fine tune an inline web application firewall (WAF) to effectively protect their web applications without disrupting legitimate traffic.
While a WAF does present certain challenges, understanding and addressing these obstacles will help you optimize its performance more quickly. This ensures your WAF functions as intended — safeguarding your valuable web applications and data. Here are a few tips on how to tune your WAF for optimal protection.
It Takes a Unique Skills Set
To become a WAF expert, you need an in-depth understanding of both your web applications and the web application firewall (WAF) itself. This includes mastering the application stack, recognizing security threats like spoofing, fraud, and DoS attacks, and having the expertise to write WAF policies that effectively protect your applications. It’s rare to find all these skills in one individual, so it’s important to give your WAF specialist time to develop their expertise or consider providing additional support to help them get started.
Ongoing WAF Tuning: A Critical Necessity
In a WAF, two things are always changing: your web apps and the threat landscape. To stay ahead, your WAF needs continuous tuning to accommodate both. A useful strategy for managing web application changes is to run your WAF in a pre-production testing environment. By operating in learning mode during this phase, the WAF can adapt to your application’s dynamic behavior, ensuring it’s well-tuned before going live. To keep up with emerging threats, leverage trusted sources, such as Alert Logic’s website, for the latest security insights.
A WAF Unites Development & Security Teams
While a WAF brings development and security teams together, it can’t manage their conflicting priorities. Development teams typically face pressure to deliver product to market with as many features as possible as fast as possible. IT security teams, on the other hand, are pressured to ensure the IT environment and the business are safe. The best advice is the same as what works in many team situations … the more awareness each team has about the other, their mandates, and why their mandates are important to the business, the easier it is for them to figure out ways to effectively work together.
Additional Resources:
- Blog: What is a WAF?
- Blog: Web App Security: Insights from the Frontline
- Solution Brief: Managed Web Application Firewall
