What is a WAF?

A WAF, or Web Application Firewall, sits between users and your application and prevents user activity that appears nefarious from reaching your application.

Why should I care?

As soon as your application is on the network, it will have to handle a significant amount of bot activity, some of it nefarious. It is commonly accepted that for a small to medium website, up to 30% of the emanates from bot activity.

How does it works?

There is a wide variety of Web Application Firewalls from simple rule-based ones to Artificial Intelligence-powered ones. At its core, a WAF will decide to forward an HTTP request to your application or drop the request, preventing it from reaching your application.

WAFs are commonly bundled with load balancers.