About Alert Logic Managed Web Application Firewall (WAF)

The Alert Logic Managed Web Application Firewall (WAF) is implemented in the network as a filtering gateway which validates all requests to the web systems.

WAF defends against all OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, URL tampering, web scraping, buffer overflow attacks, Zero-Day web application threats, and DoS attacks. WAF also provides full compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for Requirement 6.6, and an audit report of your WAF deployments, traffic, incidents, and attacks. To learn more about this report, see PCI Requirement 6.6.

The following modules are included to provide acceleration, scalability and proactive protection of web systems:

• Load Balancer: Enables scalability and acceleration of complex SSL-enabled stateful web applications.
• Web Accelerator and cache: Reduces traffic cost, improves response time and off-loading web servers.
• WAF: Proactive protection of web servers and web applications by employing a positive security model providing defenses against all OWASP top ten vulnerabilities.

WAF includes a hardened operating systems (OS) and installs on most standard hardware. The WAF software appliance installer turns a piece of general purpose application server hardware into a dedicated application acceleration and security gateway within minutes - with minimal interaction.

The WAF software appliance combines the advantages of software with the security advantages and administrative simplicity from dedicated hardware appliances.

Automated application profiling, adaptive learning, positive and negative filtering and support for XML based web services allow for out-of-box protection against attacks from malicious hackers and worms.

As WAF learns the website, it gradually turns towards a positive, white-list based, policy providing protection against attacks targeting undisclosed vulnerabilities in standard software and custom built applications.