When businesses tend to grow, their impact also tends to increase the cyber risks. If you are a successful business owner, you would be well aware of both cyberattacks and WAF (web application firewall). In fact, last year’s cyber-attack in the City of Baltimore was a much-talked topic. The hackers demanded a stark ransom amount of $76,000.
Where businesses refused to pay the ransomed amount and opted for a cyber insurance policy of $20 million, the loss was still huge — nearly $18 million. If they had opted for managed WAF, the losses would not have been of such a humongous scale. More than the actual quantifiable value of the damage, the intangibles allows the business to
- Show that they have taken steps proactively and this is a huge factor for winning customer trust
- To demonstrate their ability in actions to get to the bottom of the attack and communicate what happened and what steps they are taking to mitigate it. This also builds trust.
To summarize
The best way to build trust among the customers is to show that you take security seriously and take proactive measures in place. This sector can be taken care of with a Managed Cloud WAF. The key approach to have word-class security is a managed solution, which allows businesses to partner with security experts to work with them on these aspects both proactively and reactively.
So, today we will help you get a clear idea regarding managed cloud WAF and show how it can help you prevent malicious website attacks. We will also help you deal with incidents in case any mishaps take place despite taking proactive risk mitigation steps being taken. However, before jumping directly to know the reasons, here is a brief idea of the managed web application firewall and the benefits that it offers.
What is Managed Cloud WAF?
A cloud-based managed WAF is software that hosts a web application firewall and is provided as SaaS (software as a service). Web Application Firewall helps recognize the hacker intent and provides assistance to track them so that they never pose a threat to the web application in the future. With managed WAF, you can protect your website(s) from existing vulnerabilities in a highly cost-effective manner.
As a user, you can access it via a mobile app or a web interface. Where the cloud WAF is less complicated compared to the on-premise data safety software, and its deployment and integration are made easy even with your existing security solutions. Here is a simple explanation of the same.
- A managed WAF ‘cloud’ removes the trouble of compliance, regulation, or management complications to business owners and offers you a security application that keeps your business running.
- Most business owners believe and opt for cloud-based managed WAF as their first line of defense against website attacks.
- Where 65% of firms are doubtful about the workings of traditional WAF, you will find businesses are ready to spend an average of $620K per year on the cloud version.
- With the use of cloud WAF, you can see a visible enhancement in the overall data security effectiveness and a decrease in configuration errors.
Basic Advantages of Managed Cloud WAF
When you process and transmit vital information over the internet, you unintentionally open your website application to the attacks of bad bots and DDoS attacks. It is a fact — you are not alone. The malicious cybercriminals are always on their toes to:
- Hack web servers
- Find Vulnerabilities and manage targeted exploits
- Crash sites
- Target internet-connected endpoints
- Wreak havoc on your IT infrastructure
- Steal data
So, adopting cloud-based WAF can not only resolve the above-mentioned issues but offer these advantages to you as well.
1. Prevention of Malicious Attacks on Data
If any of the cyber-attacks are identified and mitigated before they come near your website’s internal infrastructure, wouldn’t it be a great thing? The same thing is practically true with a cloud-based managed web application firewall.
Being IaaS deployed, cloud-based WAF inspects both HTTPS and HTTP traffic and prevents web application attacks from SQL server injection, brute-force attacks, and cross-site scripting. Managed WAF remains active in the underlying cloud infrastructure and immediately isolates your website’s endpoints from every incoming cyber threat.
Its advanced and sophisticated layer 7 rules ensure that the latest attacks are thwarted completely.
2. Assistance for Effective Business Scaling
When analyzing a web application firewall solution, scalability is a vital factor that you need to consider. The main reason stands to be the entry point. Simply put, a managed web application firewall is configured specifically to act as a reverse proxy. This again acts as the last line of defense or the entry point before your internet-facing application and website are flooded with incoming web traffic.
The scalability and power of massive edge networks are leveraged by cloud-based WAF solutions. Its maximum coverage and minimum latency are ensured by the globally distributed points.
So, when you see your website receive a sudden higher traffic rate, it is all because of the leveraging benefit from the cloud-based WAF. It is most likely that these are good business traffic. You can still exercise the managed aspects of the Managed WAF service to get security experts to analyze the spike before celebrating the growth in your business traffic. The experts take action if it is indeed malicious intent and can make further updates to the trust policies dynamically.
3. Enhances Security Measures
The cloud-based WAF not only supports multi-web application hosting environments like:
- Multi-cloud
- Hybrid
- On-premise
The firewall is efficient in protecting your network edge from various malicious traffic sites. Even if you have numerous infrastructure providers, the security measures remain intact.
When you choose the right cloud-based managed WAF, you avail of an independent secured platform that secures all of your APIs and internet-facing applications.
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