What is WAAP, and why is it important?

Your business's online presence is its lifeline, but with great connectivity comes great vulnerability. Cyber threats lurk around every corner of the web, ready to exploit any weakness. WAAP — Web Application and API Protection — is your digital shield in an increasingly hostile online world.

WAAP isn't just another cybersecurity acronym, it's a comprehensive solution that safeguards your web applications, APIs, and ultimately, your business's future.

From thwarting sophisticated DDoS attacks and managing harmful bots to securing your APIs and ensuring regulatory compliance, WAAP fortifies your online presence against the rising tide of cyber threats. Are you ready to explore how WAAP can transform your business's security posture and pave the way for uninterrupted growth? Read on to discover the power of WAAP.

What is WAAP?

A WAAP (Web Application and API Protection) is a powerful security system built to shield web applications and APIs from a wide range of cyber threats, including injection attacks, bots, and API abuse. It integrates essential tools such as a web application firewall (WAF), API gateway, bot management, and DDoS protection to ensure systems and data security.

What is an API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of protocols and tools that enable different software systems to communicate, allowing your business services and applications to share data and functionality.

An API gateway plays a crucial role in API management by serving as the single entry point for all requests to your application programming interfaces, whether from internal or external sources. By ensuring that only authorized parties can access your digital resources and monitoring all API activity, the gateway significantly enhances the security of your web services and their associated data.

What is WAAP’s role in protecting your business?

A WAAP is crucial for business cybersecurity because it safeguards your web assets, applications, and APIs, which are fundamental to your operations and data exchange. Let’s take a look at why you need robust web security:

• Protects core systems: A comprehensive security solution defends sensitive information and online systems against DDoS attacks and other cyber threats, significantly reducing your company’s risk exposure.

• Enhances API management: It secures the APIs that drive data exchange between your services, ensuring that only authorized users can access and modify critical resources, thus preventing unauthorized changes or loss of control.

• Adapts to new threats: This technology continually updates to counter emerging attack techniques, ensuring your protection stays ahead of the latest online dangers and fraudulent activities.

• Meets regulatory requirements: Implementing strong security measures helps you comply with stringent regulations for handling user information, safeguarding your business interests.

• Ensures business continuity: WAAP also prevents service disruptions caused by cyber-attacks, ensuring that critical applications and services remain consistently available to employees and clients.

• Minimizes expenses: By mitigating security incidents such as data breaches, this technology helps prevent costly remediation work, keeping your operations secure and efficient. 

How does WAAP security work?

WAAP provides multiple layers of protection for your web applications and APIs by examining network traffic, behavior, and threat intelligence to identify issues and safeguard your digital assets. Here's a detailed explanation of each component:

• Traffic monitoring and analysis

The solution continuously inspects requests to your online systems, focusing on technical details such as source IP addresses, headers, and payloads to detect deviations from standard traffic patterns which could indicate a potential threat, such as a DDoS attack. When a DDoS attack is identified, WAAP uses traffic filtering methods to prevent harmful traffic while permitting genuine requests to go through. With the request halted, your security team can investigate any possible risks or threats.

• Threat intelligence integration

By incorporating the latest threat information, WAAP quickly identifies warning signs. Being aware of the most recent issues and attack techniques allows it to effectively block threats, especially those that emerge rapidly.

• Machine learning and AI-driven detection

As WAAP solutions analyze more traffic patterns and outcomes over time, their ability to detect irregular behavior improves. Advanced algorithms enable WAAPs to adapt to new tactics without relying solely on historical data, allowing them to identify new risks that could threaten your systems.

• Behavioral analysis

WAAP monitors the typical operations of your applications and users, flagging any anomalies that differ from regular patterns. This helps uncover unauthorized access attempts or account takeovers targeting your business databases and employees.

• API schema validation

By validating API calls against predefined rules, WAAP prevents the misuse of exposed services. This stringent validation safeguards APIs that manage data exchanges between your internal tools and partner systems.

• Bot management

WAAP differentiates between automated queries and human traffic to protect your digital assets. Features like bot detection and challenge pages help mitigate bot-driven attacks such as credential-stuffing.

• Access control and authentication

Strong identity verification combined with detailed access policies ensures robust protection. WAAP grants access only to authorized users, both internal and external, while blocking potential threats.

• Cloud-based architecture

The best WAAP solutions run on a cloud-based framework, allowing them to swiftly scale to manage spikes in traffic volumes. This ability lets organizations respond to DDoS attacks instantly, reducing the strain on their systems.

• CDN integration

Some WAAP solutions work with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to reduce DDoS traffic nearer to its origin, enhancing defense against massive attacks. This integration allows WAAPs to offer robust protection against DDoS threats, ensuring the reliability and efficiency of web applications and APIs.

Why Fastly's Next-Gen WAF is the ideal WAAP solution

Despite all its benefits, implementing comprehensive WAAP protection can pose challenges — your team must configure rules across multiple tools while staying ahead of evolving threats.

Fastly's Next-Gen WAF addresses these issues by providing a unified solution that offers comprehensive safeguards for your digital operations in an accessible package. 

Key advantages of Fastly include:

• Advanced threat detection: Fastly uses contextual analysis to identify and block sophisticated tactics without extensive customization, reducing time spent tuning different services.

• Flexible deployment: The solution can be deployed across different environments to protect applications and APIs, regardless of their location within your infrastructure or global distribution.

• Comprehensive protection: Fastly's Next-Gen WAF defends against OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting, bot attacks, account takeovers, and API abuse attempts targeting your workforce.

• Real-time visibility: Detailed insights into traffic and security events enable your team to quickly diagnose and resolve issues affecting digital services for employees and customers.

• API security: Fastly's Next-Gen WAF provides customized protections for various API types, including RESTful, SOAP, and GraphQL that power your operations.

• Integration support: The solution can be easily connected with existing tools, streamline management, and fit into your workflows.

• Scalable performance: Fastly maintains robust security and performance, even under heavy workloads.

Learn more about how Fastly's Next-Gen WAF can enhance your business security posture by requesting a demo today.