Written by: Rubaiat Hossain
Web application firewalls (WAFs) are the first layer of defense for protecting your apps or services from threat actors. . open-appsec uses an innovative machine learning (ML)–based threat engine that automatically prevents and blocks suspicious requests.
In this article, you'll compare these two WAFs based on their core feature set, installation experience, documentation quality, ease of use, and pricing and support.
Core Features
AWS WAF and open-appsec both offer a robust set of features for blocking malicious HTTP requests. However, each tool has certain features that the other lacks.
AWS WAF Features
AWS WAF is a security service from AWS that monitors and blocks suspicious traffic using a rule-based system. Rules in AWS WAF are definitions of how to parse the HTTP request for inspection and what to do when a rule matches. You can define rules for inspecting various parts of a web request, including the body, header, and cookie.
In addition, it uses signature-based threat detection to prevent many common web attacks, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and botnets.
Traditional Threat Detection
AWS WAF's threat detection model can be effective against both regular and targeted attacks. However, signature-based detection models are reactive by design. As such, AWS WAF only detects known attack types and cannot protect from zero-day attacks. In addition, frequent rule updates are required to block newer threats.
Reliable Rule Sets
The effectiveness of rule-based WAFs depends mainly on the quality of the rules. Therefore, you need a strong rule set to protect your app from complex attacks. The managed rule sets that are included with AWS WAF offer some protection; however, you may still need to create a custom rule set that fits your specific use case.
You can buy these rule sets from the . However, as you'll soon learn, managed services, like AWS WAF, can quickly become costly if you start purchasing premium add-ons.
Request Inspection with Rules
Another drawback of AWS WAF is that it mechanism provides adequate protection against bot attacks. For instance, it can detect standard and advanced bots based on their signature and heuristics. In addition, you can define rules to enforce various handling methods for bots, including rate limiting, CAPTCHA, and challenge actions.
Moreover, bot visibility is clear on the intuitive Bot Control dashboard, where you can easily block scrapers, crawlers, and other invasive bots. However, you'll need to pay additional fees for using the AWS WAF Bot Control managed rule group.
Fraud Control Prevention
, . The robust intrusion prevention system also readily protects against over 2,800 , .
Free and Open Source
Another key feature of open-appsec is that it's open source. Anyone can use this and create a web access control list (web ACL) using the AWS console. Then you need to choose the AWS resources that you want to protect and add rules and rule groups that you'll use for filtering traffic.
You can't associate your AWS WAF directly with Amazon EC2 or S3 instances. Instead, you need to associate your AWS WAF with an covers a broad range of topics, from initial setup to custom rule enforcement. Moreover, AWS also offers , . Using the interactive command line tool, you can quickly install this WAF for Kubernetes and Nginx.
Advanced users can also use contains detailed instructions on how to install and set up the WAF. In addition, you'll find information on everything needed to perform day-to-day operations. The reference materials also cover topics on .
Ease of Use
For users with some cloud experience, AWS WAF is easy to use. All you need to get started is an AWS account. In addition, creating and configuring the ACL is also straightforward, thanks to the intuitive wizards.
However, since AWS WAF requires add-ons for additional features, managing this WAF will require a detailed understanding of the components. You'll also need to manage, update, and audit the rule sets to keep up with emerging threats.
In comparison, open-appsec also offers excellent usability, and getting started with this WAF is fast, thanks to its detailed,
Visualization is available as a single-pane view of important security events. In addition, the monitoring dashboard is intuitive to use and displays valuable statistics about the attacks:
You can also filter events based on time ranges. This gives better visibility regarding individual attacks:
and to get an idea of how much it would cost to protect your application with AWS WAF.
In contrast, open-appsec is a fully open source solution that offers all the core features, including the ML-based detection engine, for free, and this version is more than enough to get you started.
If you want more advanced protection and dedicated support, consider signing up for .
Conclusion
AWS WAF and , in default settings.
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