WAF
Web Application Firewall Basics
Web application firewalls are built to offer web applications security by applying a set of rules to an HTTP exchange. These rules aim to protect against vulnerabilities in the application by filtering out malicious traffic. This differs from a standard firewall.
It protects web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet.
As applications are online, they have to keep certain ports open to the internet. This means attackers can try specific website attacks against the application and the associated database, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, file inclusion, cross site forgery.
While proxy firewalls generally protect clients, WAFs protect servers. Another great feature of WAFs is that they detect distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in their early stages, absorb the volume of traffic and identify the source of the attack.
By deploying a WAF in front of a web application, a safeguard is placed between the web application and the Internet. While a proxy server protects a customer machine’s identity by using an intermediary, a WAF is a type of reverse-proxy, protecting the server from exposure by having customers pass through the WAF before reaching the server.
It can be implemented in three different ways;
• Network based WAF or Hardware based
• Host based WAF or Software based
• Cloud based WAF
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