Importance of a High-Performance WAAP in today’s Threat Landscape (Part 1 of 2)
Part 1
In today’s digital landscape, the rise of increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks, including ransomware, DDoS attacks, credential stuffing, multiple encoded injections, brute force attacks, and others, make it more important than ever to have an efficient runtime protection solution in place. Otherwise, these attacks can have devastating consequences for organizations. This includes financial losses, reputational damage and legal repercussions.
As more organizations rely on APIs (application programming interfaces) to support their applications and services with the adoption of microservices architectures, attackers get a larger attack surface on which they can use more complex tactics and attack schemas. This invariably puts a strain on system resources and impacts performance. This is where Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) comes in. It provides a comprehensive approach to securing web applications and APIs from various threats and vulnerabilities. But it’s important to select the right WAAP solution. A low performing one can lead to increased latency, which is particularly harmful to e-commerce websites and other industries where fast response times are essential.
In the following, we will explore in depth the importance of high-performance web application and API protection and discuss why traditional solutions are no longer sufficient.
The Importance of a Runtime High-Performance WAAP
Runtime protection is a critical security measure that helps protect applications and systems from cyber threats in real-time. It provides constant monitoring, real-time response and multi-layered defense to protect against various types of attacks, including zero-day attacks. It is critical for edge computing providers and many industries, as well, including healthcare and finance; both industries have strict compliance requirements with the use of runtime protection solutions. Failing to comply with these requirements can result in stringent legal and/or financial consequences.
A high-performance WAAP can both protect and improve performance. One that is designed to operate efficiently and effectively not only protects against attacks, but also improves overall website and application performance. By quickly filtering out malicious traffic, a high-performance WAAP can reduce the load on servers and other resources, which leads to faster load times and improved user experience. A good example is GraphQL protection. It provides mitigation of injections but also protects server resources by limiting the impact of a very simple client GraphQL Query, which can be very complex and costly to process by the GraphQL Server.
Also, many WAAPs provide CDN (content delivery network) service, which allow a more reliable, overall network and security solution.
Slow WAAPs can negatively impact website and application performance. For instance, when a WAAP is slow or inefficient, it can cause delays loading pages and accessing resources. This, of course, leads to a poor user experience. In fact, studies have shown that even a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. And a delay that is more than 3 seconds results in an abandon rate of 40%. (find out more about how loading time can affect your bottom line). This can have serious implications for e-commerce websites and other industries where fast response times are essential.
How traffic can impact the performance of a WAAP
Encrypted Traffic: Decryption induces latency to start the security inspection. Many attacks now use encrypted traffic to evade detection and bypass security controls. While encryption is essential for protecting sensitive data in transit, it can also make it difficult for WAAPs to inspect and block malicious traffic. High-performance WAAPs with hardware acceleration and other advanced capabilities (including cloud WAAPs) can quickly decrypt and inspect traffic without impacting performance.
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): APTs are sophisticated, long-term attacks often conducted by nation-states or other highly skilled hackers. They typically involve multiple stages and advanced techniques, such as custom malware and social engineering. APTs can overwhelm traditional WAAPs and other security solutions, requiring high-performance WAAPs with advanced detection capabilities to identify and block them.
Application-Layer DDoS Attacks: Application-layer DDoS attacks are designed to overwhelm an application with a large number of requests, causing it to slow down or crash. These attacks often use complex payloads, such as HTTP floods, Slowloris attacks and DNS amplification attacks. All can be difficult for traditional WAAPs to detect and block. High-performance WAAPs with advanced detection and mitigation capabilities are needed to protect against these attacks while maintaining application performance.
Complex attack detection capabilities in runtime:
- Encoding and multiple encoded payloads: Detecting and decoding multiple forms of encoding is a crucial aspect of
WAAP performance when it comes to protecting against attacks. However, this process can be resource-intensive
and slow down the WAAP’s ability to analyze traffic. This is especially true when attackers use multiple layers
of encoding to evade detection and bypass the WAAP. Let’s take a simple example:
it is composed of 3 encoding: base64, url and url<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0;url=JTI1M0NpbWclMjUyMHNyYyUyNTNEeCUyNTIwb25lcnJvciUyNTNEYWxlcnQoMSklMjUzRQ==" > - WAAP Evasion techniques: When it comes to WAAP evasion techniques, attackers often employ various tactics to bypass the WAAP’s security measures and launch successful attacks. These techniques can include the use of encoded or obfuscated payloads, the exploitation of vulnerabilities in the WAAP software itself, and the insertion of false positives or negatives to confuse the WAAP’s detection algorithms. For example a simple % characters in a Base64 payload may confuse the WAAP from decoding the base64 value and leave the attack reach the server.
What’s Next?
Understanding the importance of a high-performance WAAP and how traffic can affect its performance is crucial for effective application security. Stay tuned for the second part of this series, where we will delve into the correlation between threats and performance, as well as the significance of WAAP integration aspect in maximizing security and performance.
Click HERE to get more information about Radware’s 360 Application Protection suite and how we keep organizations secure and safe from cyberattacks. If you’d like to speak with a Radware cybersecurity professional and better understand how to protect your applications and infrastructure, reach out to us HERE. We’d love to hear from you.
