AI-powered WAFs vs traditional firewalls: Protecting your web applications

If your business relies on web applications, you’re probably familiar with traditional network firewalls. And for good reason – they play an invaluable role filtering external threats looking to attack your overall infrastructure. But as more and more of your essential operations shift online to intricate web apps and APIs, gaps have opened up that basic firewalls simply can’t see into. The new AI-powered threats of today demand a new approach to security.

Without visibility into your custom application logic and data flows, major vulnerabilities can be exploited, allowing sensitive information theft, financial fraud, and even operational disruption. While you still need perimeter firewall defenses, exclusively relying on them to safeguard increasingly powerful web properties leaves you playing a risky game of chance (with very real consequences).

By adding specialised web application firewalls (WAFs) designed to analyse requests in the full context of your app environments – and enhanced by AI for even greater accuracy – you can lock things down and confidently build out advanced digital capabilities. With a layered defense-in-depth approach combining network and application-level protections, you can securely deliver the types of seamless, personalised digital experiences that form the foundation of lasting customer relationships and operational excellence in 2024.

Gaps in traditional firewall defences

The chances are you already have traditional firewall protection guarding your overall network (if you run any online services). These firewalls filter incoming traffic based on a set of predefined rules focused primarily around protocol, port number, IP address ranges, and basic connection state.

For example, common firewall rules restrict outside access to private intranet resources, block unwanted traffic types like online gaming protocols, detect large-scale network scans, and mitigate distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

This perimeter protection works well for classic network-focused cyberthreats. But a traditional firewall lacks context about the application logic, user workflows, and data structures unique to custom web apps and APIs. It simply scans network packets as they arrive and attempts to allow or block them accordingly. This leaves it vulnerable to the evolving tactics of AI-powered attackers.

Without insight into application internals, major vulnerabilities can sneak right past traditional firewall defences:

SQL injection attacks: Inserting malicious code allowing remote access, data destruction, or information theft

Broken authentication: Enabling unauthorised system access with stolen credentials

Sensitive data exposure: Through improper encryption, backups, or logging

Cross-site scripting (XSS): Injecting JavaScript or HTML to spread malware, hijack sessions, scrape data, or deface sites

Hackers can also target configuration issues, flawed business logic flows, identity management gaps, and unsafe object level access once inside applications themselves. AI-powered attacks can exploit these vulnerabilities with alarming speed and precision—and your firewall wouldn’t see it coming.

These exploitable application flaws allow attackers to steal sensitive business data and personal information, mine cryptocurrency illicitly on servers, hold systems ransom, take over client accounts, and both deny legitimate access and destroy backend resources. AI has only amplified these risks.

Still, traditional firewalls remain extremely important as the first line of network perimeter defence. But for companies conducting operations online through modern web apps, additional safeguards tuned to application threats – and bolstered by AI’s threat detection capabilities – are essential.

Why WAFs provide critical protection

Web application firewalls address the application layer vulnerabilities and holes in logic that basic network firewalls miss. WAFs are designed specifically to protect web apps, APIs, microservices, and rich internet applications. AI further enhances their ability to identify and respond to these threats.

A WAF will deeply inspect all traffic flowing to web properties using targeted rulesets and negative security models defining suspicious behaviour. From there, they analyse requests for indicators of common exploits and attacks seeking to abuse application behaviour and functionality. AI-powered analysis can detect subtle patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. These might include:

Extreme traffic spikes indicating possible DDoS events

Suspicious geolocations of an IP addresses

Repeated input submissions just below lockout thresholds

Unusual HTTP headers, user agents, or protocols

Known malicious payloads in POST requests

Attempts to traverse directory structures in unpredictable ways

Special characters and patterns indicating SQL injection or cross-site scripting

Advanced WAFs combine this real-time threat detection with global threat intelligence to identify emerging exploits and bad actors as soon as new attack patterns appear. AI and machine learning algorithms even allow some solutions to derive additional behavioral rules by examining your specific application traffic patterns over time. AI’s adaptability is crucial in this constantly shifting landscape.

As traffic passes through, the WAF blocks dangerous requests while allowing legitimate users through with minimal latency impact. This protects the application itself, shielding both data and functionality from compromise. AI-powered WAFs can do this with remarkable speed and accuracy, keeping pace with the ever-changing threat landscape.

Most WAF products also include capabilities like virtual patching, behavioral anomaly detection, automatic policy tuning, third-party integration, and positive security models for detecting verified use cases.

Breaking down the key features of traditional firewalls vs WAFs

FeatureTraditional FirewallWeb Application Firewall (WAF)Layer of operationNetwork (Layer 3/4)Application (Layer 7)Traffic analysisPackets, ports, IP addressesHTTP/HTTPS requests, content, parameters, headersAttack protectionNetwork-level attacksWeb application-specific attacks (SQLi, XSS, CSRF, etc.)CustomisationLimitedExtensiveAdditional capabilitiesMay offer basic intrusion preventionOften include bot mitigation, DDoS protection, API securityAI integrationLimited or non-existentConsiderably more prevalent. Used to enhance threat detection and and incident response

Creating an application security ladder

Web applications underpin many essential business capabilities – internal operations management, customer experience, partner integration – the list goes on. As reliance on these application ecosystems grows, so does business risk exposure through underlying vulnerabilities.

Strengthening application security closes major blindspots while allowing companies to pursue advanced digital transformation supporting key goals around:

Improving self-service and convenience through customer portal expansion

Accelerating development velocity using CI/CD pipelines and microservices

Enabling real-time data exchanges through IoT integrations and open API ecosystems

Increasing revenue with personalised interfaces and recommendation engines

Combining network-layer perimeter defences from traditional firewalls with reinforced protections from specialised WAFs creates a security ladder effect. The traditional firewall filters allowed traffic at the network level based on IPs, protocols, and volume heuristics. This protects against basic attacks like worms, reconnaissance scans, and DDoS events.

Then the WAF takes over at the application layer, scrutinising the full context of requests to identify attempts to exploit app logic and functionality itself using injection attacks, stolen credentials, unusual workflows, or other sneaky techniques security teams encounter daily.

Together, this layered defence-in-depth approach secures both the overall network and the intricate web apps conducting an ever-larger percentage of essential business. Companies can then direct more development resources towards advancing capabilities rather than just patching vulnerabilities.

Final word

The costs of security incidents grow more severe year over year. And as companies rely increasingly on web apps to manage operations, serve customers, and drive revenue, application vulnerabilities present a serious (and immediate) business risk.

Protecting systems with advanced application-aware defenses – powered by AI – means that your security supports rather than gets in the way of your key strategic initiatives

With scalable and secure defenses guarding your web properties, you can confidently build capabilities supporting goals around better customer experience, smoother operations, increased sales growth, and expanded partner channels. In other words, you can focus on pushing your business forward with the peace of mind knowing that you’ve done your part in securing your perimeter and web apps in our ever AI-driven world.

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