What does application security do?
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Unprotected web applications are vulnerable to a number of cyber attacks such as the OWASP Top 10, sophisticated SQL injections, malicious sources and DDoS attacks. This makes them an easy entry point for hackers.
Protecting applications requires a deep understanding of the application itself and the flow of data between user and application.
Web Application Firewall
Web Application Firewall is a security control that provides complete protection for Web applications in any organisation. It combines two security paradigms for maximum protection:
1. Negative security - reactive, signature-based protection on eliminating all known threats as long as they can be translated into a pattern of traffic or user activity. This control may be compared to the Intrusion Detection class of controls.
2. Positive security - proactive, policy-based protection that limits user transactions to only those actions that are explicitly allowed. The policy consists of a set of rules that limit web request or response entities’ syntax, cardinality and content. In summary, it can be described as “what is not allowed is prohibited”.
Web Application Firewalls operate in a mode that limits malicious or suspicious activity in an efficient way. This can involve blocking a request, responding with arbitrary content, rate-limiting or redirection.
Certain Web Application Firewalls provide DDoS prevention capabilities at the application level. They combine positive and negative security controls to provide additional availability controls, for example:
- Logical Denial of Service attack detection (e.g. Slowloris)
- Bot detection
- Web scrapping detection
Positive security relies on a sound policy that requires technical expertise and the investment of time. Web Application Firewalls provide expert systems or wizards that allow for faster deployment and staging of the policy. Such functionality decreases training requirements and allows for the more effective introduction of this security control in an organisation.
Web Application Firewalls also support compliance requirements. As a solution that inspects application flows it offers both pattern discovery and policy enforcement. This helps to achieve compliance with regulations such as PCI DSS as well as assisting SIEM solutions as an additional source of contextual information.
In summary, in today’s security world a web application firewall is a key security technology. When applied correctly it can minimise the risk of application exposure and be an efficient tool in application vulnerability patching.
Application Delivery Controller
Application Delivery Controllers are an essential tool for implementing complex business requirements in the fast-paced information technology domain. It originates from the load balancers that supported the optimal use of corporate computational resources. Nowadays, load balancing is just one of the functional requirements of the art of application delivery. Notable functionalities of an ADC include :
- TLS offloading with hardware assistance
- Reverse proxy and policy-based request routing
- Content caching
- Request adaptation and manipulation
- Stateful session persistence
- Programmability and extensibility
- High availability and DDoS resistance
- Authentication, authorisation and accountability
- Legal regulation support and visibility
Most important benefits of application security
- Maximum uptime for your applications.
- Control over application performance and security.
- Highest end-user experience for your customers and employees.
Nomios has many years of experience and expertise in deploying web application firewall solutions into large and complex networks. We partner with leading and innovative WAF vendors to create highly efficient web application security solutions.
Our experience also extends to a substantial number of application delivery projects in complex business and service provider environments. Nomios Poland specialises in programmable application delivery and bringing value by extending known solutions through APIs and development interfaces such as iRules on F5 Network devices.
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