AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps detect and block malicious web requests targeted at your web applications. AWS WAF allows you to create rules that can help protect against common web exploits like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. With AWS WAF you first identify the resource (either an Amazon CloudFront distribution or an Application Load Balancer) that you need to protect. You then deploy the rules and filters that will best protect your applications. You can deploy, create, and maintain these web security rules in the AWS Management Console or using the AWS WAF API.
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AWS WAF lets you create rules to filter web traffic based on conditions that include IP addresses, HTTP headers and body, or custom URIs. This gives you an additional layer of protection from web attacks that attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in custom or third party web applications. In addition, AWS WAF makes it easy to create rules that block common web exploits like SQL injection and cross site scripting.
AWS WAF allows you to create a centralized set of rules that you can deploy across multiple websites. This means that in an environment with many websites and web applications you can create a single set of rules that you can reuse across applications rather than recreating that rule on every application you want to protect.
AWS WAF can be completely administered via APIs. This provides organizations with the ability to create and maintain rules automatically and incorporate them into the development and design process. For example, a developer who has detailed knowledge of the web application could create a security rule as part of the deployment process. This capability to incorporate security into your development process avoids the need for complex handoffs between application and security teams to make sure rules are kept up to date.
AWS WAF can also be deployed and provisioned automatically with AWS CloudFormation sample templates that allow you to describe all security rules you would like to deploy for your web applications delivered by Amazon CloudFront.
AWS WAF provides real-time metrics and captures raw requests that include details about IP addresses, geo locations, URIs, User-Agent and Referers. AWS WAF is fully integrated with Amazon CloudWatch, making it easy to setup custom alarms when thresholds are exceeded or particular attacks occur. This information provides valuable intelligence that can be used to create new rules to better protect applications.
