Many organizations today rely only on “unauthenticated” web application security scans, leaving their admin and user portals unchecked. While it is crucial to protect your system against external automated attacks, you shouldn’t ignore the possibility of a targeted attack from someone with valid logins. If your app lets anyone signup online, it could easily expose your business to attackers.

Servers host applications and services; therefore, they are the center of all web, mobile, and API applications. These origin servers are under constant attack as hackers run probes to exploit open vulnerabilities and launch large-scale DDoS attacks that could bring down the entire infrastructure. Therefore, ensuring availability and protecting the integrity of origin servers is paramount. This article will cover what, why, and how of origin protection.

Cloudflare’s web application firewall (WAF) serves as the central pillar of its advanced application security suite, ensuring the safety and efficiency of applications. Cloudflare’s free plan presents notable benefits for SMEs managing limited traffic and smaller-scale applications.

Akamai, a pioneering WAF solution, retains its key position within the evolving WAAP landscape. As one of the earliest players in the CDN space, Akamai maintains its dominance in content delivery. Akamai’s App & API Protector combines a range of leading-edge technologies, including web application firewall, bot mitigation, API security, and DDoS protection, all within a user-friendly, unified solution.

Security testing aims to find vulnerabilities and security weaknesses in the software/ application. By subjecting the software or application to controlled security scenarios, security testing ensures that the system is adequately prepared to withstand attacks and unforeseen failures. Security experts and testers use different types of security testing to identify potential threats, measure the probability of exploitation of vulnerabilities, and gauge the overall risks facing the software/ app.

We are excited to introduce Asset Discovery – a new feature that allows you to find and protect unknown applications, domains, sub-domains, and other public assets. This feature is now part of AppTrana WAAP and Indusface WAS (Web Application Scanning). Unknown is the biggest risk, especially when it is an orphaned app that was launched by one of your business divisions that is no longer in use.

As the pioneer in web security, Akamai takes the lead with its Web Application Firewall. It excels at detecting threats within HTTP and SSL traffic at the Edge Platform, offering a proactive shield for your origin data centers. Akamai’s extensive experience in content delivery networks (CDN) makes it an industry favorite, especially in media, gaming, and streaming domains.

Imperva WAF is a comprehensive security tool for web applications and APIs, which monitors and filters both incoming and outgoing traffic while also blocking potential attacks. Imperva is utilized by medium to large enterprises to prevent potential security breaches. Through its hybrid web security testing approach, the WAF ensures a zero false-positive SLA for all clients.

Vulnerability assessment identifies weaknesses or vulnerabilities in computer systems, networks, and software, along with the inherent risks they introduce. By using specialized tools like vulnerability scanners and manual methods, vulnerability assessment helps organizations figure out where they might be at risk. This process not only identifies potential problems but also helps prioritize them based on their severity level.

Many API-related breaches do not result from sophisticated attackers or diligent security researchers but stem from improper API design and implementation. Recent incidents at Clubhouse, John Deere, and Experian serve as examples, highlighting the consequences of neglecting basic API security practices. To safeguard against security risks, comprehensive API security testing becomes essential, ensuring APIs align with published specifications and are resilient to malicious inputs and attacks.