Habits of An Effective AWS Web Application Firewall

Layer 7 security has never been more important especially after the world is going cloud. Startups and new age growth companies want to focus on promoting and executing their businesses without worrying about hosting and security.

That is where web application firewalls come in. Today, companies on platforms like Amazon Web Services are aggressively looking for AWS developer certification and I am going to tell you what you should look for in them.

1. Proactive

Web application firewall should not only protect existing vulnerabilities but should actively look for newer ones too. Of course, it means human intervention where experts patch the zero day vulnerabilities quickly before hackers can exploit them. Look for a firewall that offers this facility at the application layer.

2. Adaptable

It should be in constant communication with the security experts to get updates on latest attack trends. Many of the WAFs available in the market are closed to the real world. They act like a box that works on age old rules and do not want to listen about what is happening in the real world. Companies should ideally avoid any such kind of stout security technique for the long run.

3. Distributed Denial of Services

There is absolutely no way to automated distributed denial of services attack prevention. Attackers are always coming up with newer ways to send zombie traffic and machine cannot really differentiate it from the real traffic. Ultimately, servers get overwhelmed and crash. In fact, many attackers ask for ransom against these kinds of attacks. A good AWS WAF should offer managed DDoS protection where traffic is continuously monitored for attack patterns and blocked when spam is spotted.

Going cloud saves you a lot of resources but getting the right AWS Web Application Firewall can not only prevent data breaches but also website downtime.

It has been predicted that 75% of the cyberattacks happen at the application layer. Unfortunately, most of the companies focus excessively on network and psychical layer of the communication treating application layer as a step child.

Think about it, about 97% of all data breaches in the last two years have happened by SQL Injection, an application layer weakness that was discovered more than 20 years ago. Therefore, it is clear that application weaknesses are not dealt with properly. Even if businesses look into app security, they come up with firewalls that fail to perform as expected. If you are also wondering what makes a WAF obsolete, we have just the answers.

1. It does not update new threats.

A web application firewall that is blind and deaf to real world threats is bound fail. It is like a box that has been configured to stop on a limited set of threats and nothing beyond that. On the other hand, in real world, dozens of threats are found every day and they need to be stopped to keep the business safe.

2. It does not stop DDoS attacks.

Denial of service attacks are problematic. On Layer 7 or application layer, distributed denial of service attacks simply do not let the website perform. So when a real user actually comes to the website, it crashes. That is why it is important that a WAF protects against DDoS attacks too. However, most options around today do not offers any protection against these kinds of attacks.

3. It does not offer expert validation.

No web application firewall can survive without experts handling them. New age businesses need protection against threats from real hackers, something that automated intelligence can never get close to. If you have installed an auto WAF with no human intervention, it will most likely fail at security.