Applications and APIs are the backbone of modern businesses. They power customer interactions, process sensitive data, and drive revenue. However, the growing reliance on these digital assets makes them attractive targets for cyberattacks. Outdated security methods can lead to performance slowdowns, workflow interruptions, and added complexity. Organizations need solutions that help protect both applications and services, without blocking legitimate traffic and frustrating users.
Fastly Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) solutions, including Next-Gen Web Application Firewall, Bot Management, API Security, and DDoS Protection, tackle these challenges head-on, pairing a developer-centric approach with robust security to enhance productivity and mitigate risks. This powerful combination allows companies to trust that their apps and services will work as intended and enhance user experiences while accelerating time to value and driving top-line revenue growth.
Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study, commissioned by Fastly to understand the potential return on investment (ROI) that organizations may realize by using Fastly’s Web Application and API Protection solutions. The study aims to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of WAAP solutions on their organization. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is an omnichannel retailer with 4 million customers, more than 350 million annual site visits, and more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
Fastly Application Security Solutions Deliver 235% ROI Over Three Years
Interviewees reported that before adopting Fastly, their organizations encountered several challenges with their previous WAAP solutions. These issues led to delays in application deployment, false positives that impacted legitimate traffic, and difficulties managing traffic spikes. As a result, their systems were at risk of malicious attacks, causing website outages, financial repercussions, and loss of brand trust.
By moving to Fastly, they saw the following benefits:
Increased conversions driving $3.7 million in profit gains: Fastly transformed security from a cost center to a revenue driver by blocking non-organic traffic & enhancing performance, leading to a 4-8% conversion rate improvement
Increased developer and operational productivity by 25%: Fastly accelerated application deployment and increases developer confidence while reducing security incidents without expanding the team, driving $700,000 in gains
Reduced overage traffic, challenge, and other costs by $832,000: The composite organization mitigated non-organic traffic while reducing overage charges, usage costs, and regulatory fees.
Consolidated security infrastructure savings of $839,000: The composite eliminated the need for various WAF solutions, traffic managers, and domain translations.
The composite organizations representative of interviewed customers also saw the following:
3X increased application development time to value
30% decrease in security incidents
25% reduction in false positives
Accelerated change implementation
Improved marketing effectiveness
Enhanced customer experience
Here’s what one of our customers said:
“Last holiday season is when we first enabled bot management, [...] we saw a double-digit conversion rate increase. We attributed the increase to reducing the bot traffic and getting more real users through checkout.” - Director of Global Engineering, Retail
You can read the full case study here to learn more about how these organizations benefited from moving to Fastly.
