AWS WAF vs Cisco WSA | What are the differences? (2024)

FAQs

AWS WAF vs Cisco WSA | What are the differences? ›

Pricing Model: AWS WAF follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where customers are charged based on their actual usage of the service. Cisco WSA, on the other hand, typically follows a traditional upfront licensing model, where customers need to purchase licenses based on their estimated capacity requirements.

WAF deployments protect web application traffic, while IPS deployments scan and protect at the network level by inspecting all packets. An IPS is typically deployed inline to incoming traffic, scans for threats in most network protocols, and works at OSI Layer 4-7.

A network firewall typically protects a wider range of traffic types, whereas a WAF deals with a specific threat that the traditional approach cannot cover. It is therefore advisable to have both solutions, especially if a business's operating systems work closely with the web.

What is the difference between a web security gateway and WAF? A web gateway secures internet access by filtering unwanted software, while a web application firewall (WAF) protects web applications from attacks by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic.

Cisco® Secure Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a Cisco Secure OEM solution based on Radware's Cloud WAF Service that provides a fully managed, cloud-based web application firewall service.

Pricing Model: AWS WAF follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where customers are charged based on their actual usage of the service. Cisco WSA, on the other hand, typically follows a traditional upfront licensing model, where customers need to purchase licenses based on their estimated capacity requirements.

Web application firewalls (WAFs) help you protect your web applications and edge devices against common web exploits that could compromise security, affect application availability, or result in the consumption of excessive resources.

AWS WAF is a web application firewall (WAF) that helps you protect your websites and web applications against various attack vectors at the application layer (OSI Layer 7 ).

AWS WAF helps protects your website from common attack techniques like SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). In addition, you can create rules that can block or rate-limit traffic from specific user-agents, from specific IP addresses, or that contain particular request headers.

There are three primary types of WAFs: a cloud-based WAF, software-based WAF, and hardware-based WAF. Each type of WAF has its own advantages and disadvantages. Lastly, WAFs are increasingly part of a larger application security strategy: web application and API protection (WAAP).

What layer is WAF in OSI? ›

A WAF is a protocol layer 7 defense (in the OSI model), and is not designed to defend against all types of attacks. This method of attack mitigation is usually part of a suite of tools which together create a holistic defense against a range of attack vectors.

Limited protection: A WAF only protects against web-based attacks and may not be effective against other types of attacks, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).

These two services are included in the AWS Edge Services ecosystem and provide DDoS protection. The difference between them is that AWS WAF(Web Application Firewall) provides protection on the application layer and AWS Shield protects the infrastructure layers of the OSI model.

Firewall: The Key Distinctions. Scope: WAFs primarily protect web servers and web apps against application-level cyberattacks. In contrast, network firewalls focus on safeguarding the entire network infrastructure.

Cisco Secure Web Appliance defends against threats with multiple layers of antimalware technology and Cisco Talos threat intelligence, which is updated every three to five minutes. Every piece of web content accessed is analyzed using security and context-aware scanning engines.

In summary, AWS WAF is a cloud-native, scalable, and focused web application firewall solution, while Cisco ASA is a network security appliance that provides a broader range of network security capabilities.

AWS WAF focuses on Layer 7 protection, while Shield protects against DDoS attacks. Firewall Manager manages the protection. Learn their key features, pricing and use cases.

Intrusion Detection & Prevention Systems

This includes alerting administrators of malicious activity and policy violations, as well as identifying and taking action against attacks. You can use AWS services and third party IDS/IPS solutions offered in AWS Marketplace to stay one step ahead of potential attackers.

AWS WAF can inspect the source IP address of a web request against a set of IP addresses and address ranges. You can create a rule that blocks requests from all IP addresses except the specific IP addresses in an IP set.

While a proxy server protects a client machine's identity by using an intermediary, a WAF is a type of reverse-proxy, protecting the server from exposure by having clients pass through the WAF before reaching the server. A WAF operates through a set of rules often called policies.