How To Setup Web Application Firewall

You can look at the WAF or web application firewall as another weapon in your arsenal which can help to safeguard your critical assets or data from external threats. But a WAF cannot be regarded as a replacement for a properly written code or for input validation. It should be only viewed as an extra layer of defence. The WAF is therefore mainly a defence against newly-discovered threats or attacks that have been always successful previously. It can therefore protect the site while such loopholes are getting repaired and then tested by developers.

While setting up the web application firewall, it is important to consider four key steps which are part of this security life cycle. These steps are securing the firewall, monitoring it, testing it, and then improving it. So, it is an ongoing process which moves in a loop and offers continuous protection. Before you are connecting any device to the network you must have proper documents of its infrastructure. You need to apply patches and take time for configuring this device to increase security.

How you define rules in your security policies will determine how you will finally configure the WAF. So, WAFs will help to reveal all the technical issues inside a network like false positive alerts, so that you can work to eradicate these in the future. Besides, careful testing must also be carried out diligently especially when your site uses content which may not conform to the web standards.

The appliance based WAFs will be located right behind the enterprise firewall and just in front of the web servers. Where the network based deployments turn out to be less preferred, businesses can choose alternative options. the server based WAFs can be set up directly on the corporate web server and these offer similar feature sets as it processes traffic prior to it entering the application or web server.

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