Adopting a new paradigm for App Protection in your ADC

In a previous blog, I discussed the shortcomings of traditional on-premises Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). The escalating threat landscape, the evolution of modern applications, and the global shortage of cybersecurity experts have all contributed to the decline of on-prem WAFs. These factors have also significantly impacted the integrated WAFs within Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs).

The Challenges of Integrated WAFs

While ADCs offer the advantage of centralizing application traffic management, their integrated WAFs often face limitations. The computational demands of robust app protection can strain the ADC’s resources, leading to performance bottlenecks. Upgrading the ADC’s integrated app protection capacity is a costly and time-consuming endeavor, and there’s no guarantee that the increased capacity will suffice for future needs.

The Need for a Hybrid Solution

Despite the challenges, it remains architecturally advantageous to protect applications at the ADC level. This approach allows for efficient traffic management and centralized security policies. To address the limitations of integrated WAFs, a hybrid solution is needed that combines the best of both worlds: on-premises ADC functionality and the benefits of a managed cloud app protection service.

Radware’s Innovative Approach

At Radware, we’ve developed a groundbreaking approach that seamlessly integrates our managed cloud app protection services with various application delivery controllers from different vendors. This hybrid solution offers the following key benefits:

• Consistency: Enjoy a unified app protection experience across all your deployment environments, whether on-premises, in a private cloud, or in a public cloud.
• Advanced Protection: Benefit from our state-of-the-art app protection solution, which includes coverage against the latest threats, such as API protection (with auto discovery and business logic attack protection), bot protection, and WAF.
• Managed by Experts: Our managed cloud app protection service eliminates the management overhead and false positives often associated with on-prem WAFs. Our cybersecurity experts optimize your security policies, ensuring your applications are always protected.
• No Traffic Rerouting: By integrating the app protection service within your ADC, you avoid the need for traffic to travel through third-party services, reducing latency and eliminating dependency on external cloud services.
• Privacy Protection: Keep your sensitive data private by avoiding the need to share your SSL private keys with a third-party provider.

Addressing the Scalability Challenge

Many organizations have faced the challenge of performance bottlenecks when activating integrated WAFs in their ADCs. The traditional approach of replacing the ADC with a larger machine may not be the most efficient solution.

Our hybrid solution addresses scalability concerns by leveraging the cloud-based app protection service. By offloading computationally intensive tasks to the cloud, you can relieve the load on your ADC and scale your app protection service as needed without impacting on-premises resources.

To further enhance scalability, Radware also offers auto-scale ADC clusters. This allows you to dynamically add or remove ADC instances to match your changing workload requirements.

Key Benefits:

Comprehensive Threat Protection: Benefit from our cloud-based app protection service’s extensive threat intelligence, advanced detection techniques, and real-time response capabilities.

Improved Performance: Optimize application performance by offloading computationally intensive tasks to the cloud.

Reduced Risk: Mitigate the risk of data breaches, application downtime, and compliance violations.

Simplified Management: Centralize security management and reduce the burden on your IT team.

Cost-Effective: Achieve a balance between on-premises and cloud-based resources to optimize your investment.

Conclusion

In today’s dynamic threat landscape, a hybrid approach to app protection is essential. By combining the best of both worlds – integrating a managed cloud-based app protection service into your on-premises ADC – you can achieve simplified management, enhanced security, and improved scalability.