AWS WAF Room for Improvement

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven.

The solution's pricing could be improved. You cannot add multiple rules within AWS WAF's CPU.

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AshishGautam - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Project Manager at Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute In India

The area of reporting in the product needs to have a proper format. If you want to find the event log for an event and IP address from another country, there is a need to do some rework after the reporting part is taken care of so that the management can easily read the reports. A technical person in the organization can always understand where a particular network traffic comes in or where traffic is blocked with the help of WAF, but those in the management department would never understand the concepts that a technical person can understand. The reporting part of AWS WAF needs to be improved.

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Aravind D - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Engineer at ASSA ABLOY Group

Google uses an AI tool to provide insights about rules. It will be helpful if the product recommends rules that we can implement.

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Buyer's Guide
AWS WAF
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about AWS WAF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
UU
Manager - Cyber Security and SOC at Continental Tire

The default content policy available in the tool is not very strong compared to the competitors. Most of the WAFs will have a default set of policies and rules that we need to enable, which will satisfy our requirements. However, for AWS, we must put some time and effort into creating our content policy to get optimal protection.

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RG
Chief Technology Officer at GyFTR - Vouchagram India Pvt Ltd

The solution should identify why it blocks particular websites. The solution performs high-level blocks but doesn't provide very much detail. For example, a particular IT is blocked due to a vulnerability but we are not able to identify the reason for the block. Our developers or IT staff need to be able to identify vulnerabilities to fix applications. 

We would like output that tracks how many concurrent requests come through a particular application gateway, the response times for requests, and the latency parameters. 

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Adrian Milea - PeerSpot reviewer
Raiffeisen at Raiffeisen Bank Romania

As of now, regarding WAF, I'm not sure what the minuses or pluses are. You have the native WAF, which you can deploy directly on the load balancer. However, you also have that store where you can actually deploy some other vendors' specifics. At this point, feature-wise, I don't see anything lacking, more or less. Obviously, if we want to migrate, which is not yet the case, there might be a significant impact.

For uniformity, AWS has a well-accepted framework. However, it'll be better for us if we could have some more documented guidelines on how the specific business should be structured and the roles that the cloud recommends. If every company is building its own framework based on their experience or their past experience, this might be subjective, and it'll end up with each company having its own framework, which can be good. However, it'll be better to have a standardized baseline that every company could build on. 

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Manikandan-R - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Project Manager at Synopsys, Inc.

There are some limitations. We can add a maximum of four rate-based rules to the rule group. We must monitor and clean up the WAF manually. We cannot create rules if it goes above four. It requires manual intervention. We have to check, clean, and maintain it regularly. We do not want to do it. We are willing to pay extra if it can be improved. We need additional features so we do not have to do manual interventions.

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Aravindhan Suresh - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Hippo Video

AWS WAF would be better if it uses AI or machine learning to detect a potential attack or a potential IP that creates an attack even before it happens. I want AWS WAF to capture the IP and automatically write the rule to automate the entire process. I want an AI feature in AWS WAF in the future.

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IP
Group IT Manager at Civcns

The price could be improved.

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Ashish  Paikrao - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Pathlock

The product has fewer features. It didn’t fulfill all our requirements when we installed it. It is getting better now, though. The product must provide more features.

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Kavin Kalaiarasu - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst at M2P Fintech

It would be better if AWS WAF were more flexible. For example, if you take a third-party WAF like Imperva, they maintain the rule set, and these rule sets are constantly updated. They push security insights or new rules into the firewall. However, when it comes to AWS, it has a standard set of rules, and only those sets of rules in the application firewalls trigger alerts, block, and manage traffic.

Alternative WAFs have something like bot mitigation or bot control within the WAF, but you don't have such things in AWS WAF. I will say there could have been better bot mitigation plans, there could have been better dealer mitigation plans, and there could be better-updated rule sets for every security issue which arises in web applications.

In the next release, I would like to see if AWS WAF could take on DDoS protection within itself rather than being in a stand-alone solution like AWS Shield. I would also like a solution like a bot mitigation.

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Akshit Malik - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior Associate - IT at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

One area that could be improved is the DDoS protection. We had a DDoS attack recently, and even though we had set a limit of 1,000 requests per five minutes, AWS WAF was not able to block all of the requests.  

AWS wasn't able to clarify all the DDoS attacks. It may have been due to a wrong configuration in the rules, but AWS didn't block all the requests.

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Aditya Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

AWS WAF provides only basic protection, and they should provide more features like other third-party competitors. The world is now moving towards managed services. It would be good if the solution provided managed WAF services. If AWS WAF could detect that some attack is about to happen and alert the user, we can write some rules and stop that from happening.

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KO
DevOps Engineer at SEKAI

There is room for improvement in pricing. 

The pricing for each rule group is a bit too high. It's a monthly subscription, and it can get quite expensive for rules that I won't use for my application. For example, I might create a rule group that costs $10, and I only use one of the rules in the group. That's $10 for a rule that I'm not even using! So, the pricing could be more flexible, or there could be a way to get discounts for unused rules.

So, AWS WAF should have a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where I can only pay for the rules that I use. 

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KU
Linux admin at Ameex Technologies

I don't think any improvement is needed in AWS WAF.

As technology develops and grows, AWS WAF will have to improve as a product.

AWS WAF should provide better protection to its users, and the security features need to improve.

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ND
Head of Digital Product Office at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

The solution is cloud-based, and therefore the billing model that comes with it could be more intuitive, in my opinion. It's very easy to not fully understand how you tag things for billing and then you can quite easily run up a high bill without realizing it. The solution needs to be more intuitive around the tagging system, which enables the billing. Right now, I have a cloud architect that does that on our behalf and it isn't something that a business user could use because it still requires quite a lot of technical knowledge to do effectively.

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VS
Principal Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We have not implemented WAF completely. We are working around that issue right now in the AWS. We are creating log files and then we are using Kibana for analysis. Out WAF deployment is not perfected yet so it is not implemented as our long-term solution. It will take another month to complete the setup. I do not have the big picture on it yet in a live environment, so my view of what will need to be improved under load is limited.  

I think one thing that should be available is that if there are technical problems in the AWS, then there should be automated alerts to AWS. Calling support is not that easy. It would be better to automatically send emails to them to report that there is a bug in their programming.  

I have an idea for a new feature to consider. I think the security area and other things that they provide are good, and I know there are third-party integrations. It provides a lot of value. The problem is that the 'value' of the solution makes it very costly. That is a big thing. $20,000 for this solution seems like a lot.  

Right now we are limited to only MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. There should be other options and also a way to check the security of it. I think AWS should develop and make available some kind of a management screen so we can see the logs, which servers are using the service, and how the security is performing. All we can see right now is if there are any security breaches. This is not enough information to evaluate the performance of the system.  

For example, there are a lot of people using MongoDB databases. Over the last two years, a lot of them got hacked. Mongo should have had a way to alert end users if its facilities get hacked. A manager or some administrator should receive an email saying that this or that account got hacked and there was a security breach. This would be enough notification to prompt taking other appropriate actions.  

There should also be a report or alerts which tell us that the configuration is having security issues. I think there is something called PVE security rules which might be implemented. Of course, Cisco's security rules could also be implemented. Once the rules are implemented, we know for certain if they are providing a secure connection or not. We need some type of check on the configuration that can create alerts for potential security issues and to have proper notifications.  

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Dale Ellwood - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Architect at GoSee Travel

They should make the solution's implementation process faster. Presently, we have to write code and work a lot more for integration. It doesn't provide any default logs. So, we need help getting logs, audio, and dashboard queries. Also, there should be technical documentation for the solution in case of errors. Every time we have to log a support case with AWS to obtain details to resolve it. Instead, it would be better if they provide a proper document for reference.

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PC
Independent Consultant at Unaikui

The solution can improve its price.

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Venkatesh VRH - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Security Manager at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

It's pretty much an AWS native service, so it's something that they improve year after year. They do continuous improvements on a year-by-year basis, so the product is really good. An improvement area would be that it's more of a manual effort when you have to enable rules. That's one of the downsides. If that can be done in an automated way, it would be great. That's a lagging feature currently.

It could also support multi-cloud integration where you can integrate with applications other than AWS applications. It would be a good feature or use case for this solution.

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Trivikram Rajendreaprabhu - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior security engeneer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The product could be improved by expanding the weightage units of rules we have when writing policy. Currently, our company uses WAF policy and Web ACL but is limited to only 1500 units of rules.

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AK
Security implmentation engineer at a security firm with 51-200 employees

We have a lot of issues related to attacks on our cloud. There is a limitation on how to mitigate the issues in the solution. The product should improve the DDoS-related features.

The solution should provide an advanced tool for DDoS migration and a better reporting method. Compared to other solutions, we do not get all the information we need for reporting.

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Prasanth MG - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Readyly

The solution can include provisions to block requests targeted at specific URIs (/.env) which are obviously malicious. Also, sometimes it blocks legitimate requests. We have to keep changing some of our rules in this case. It would be great if they maintained the AWS-managed rule sets properly.

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Harkamal-Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at NTT

Support for AWS WAF needs improvement.

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TM
AWS Security Specialist at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We should be able to do proper whitelisting. 

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CK
Infrastructure Engineer

In terms of improvement, AWS WAF works perfectly fine right now. I would like to see the addition of more advanced rate-limiting features in the next release. It would be beneficial to extend rate limiting beyond just web servers to the main node level.

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HM
CVO at Megaaisec

I believe there is a need to move towards real-time analysis with the help of AI and intelligent systems in the future. This would reduce the reliance on manual work and enhance the functionality of detection protection. By incorporating AI-driven data analysis and data science techniques, we can improve the solution's user-friendliness, security compatibility, and accuracy.

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Prakash-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Axcess.io

The cost management has room for improvement.

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AF
Advisory and IT Transformation Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

AWS WAF could improve by making the overall management easier. Many people that have started working with AWS WAF do not have an easy time. They should make it easy to use. 

The AWS WAF documentation sometimes is not clear and could improve for all levels of people using the solution, such as developers. The interface could be easier to use.

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AB
Solution Architect at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees

The pricing should be more affordable, especially as it pertains to small clients. 

While the complexity of the installation can vary from one service to another, overall, I would say that it and the configuration and navigation are somewhat complex. These could stand improvement and bring down my rating of the product. 

Customer support should also be improved. 

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RG
Physical Designer at Semtech Corporation

It is sometimes a lot of work going through the rules and making sure you have everything covered for a use case. It is just the way rules are set and maintained in this solution. Some UI changes will probably be helpful.

It is not easy to find the documentation of new features. Documentation not being updated is a common problem with all services, including this one. You have different versions of the console, and the options shown in the documentation are not there. For a new feature, there is probably an announcement about being released, but when it comes out, there is no actual documentation about how to use it. This makes you either go to technical support or community, which probably doesn't have an idea either. The documentation on the cloud should be the latest one.

Finding information about a specific event can be a bit challenging. For this solution, not much documentation is available in the community. It could be because it is a new tool. Whenever there is an issue, it is just not that simple to resolve, especially if you don't have premium support. You have pretty much nowhere to look around, and you just need to poke around to try and make it work right.

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Abdul Qayyum - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Architect at Vodworks

One area for improvement in AWS WAF could be the limitation on the number of rules, particularly those from third-party sources, within the free tier. Users may face budget constraints when trying to implement additional rules beyond the free tier limit.

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MA
Manager, IT Infrastructure & Information Security at flyadeal

A significant improvement would be built in bots protection enhancement, or seamless integration with other products. For now, there are limited feature to protect against an attack from the bad bots so users go to third party solutions, which just complicates integration and operation.

A helpful additional feature would be to have a fully unified unique product, including the DDoS, with sophisticated attack capabilities including anti bot management. They should also take a look at reviewing the complexity of the integration with other third-party vendor solutions.

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SA
Superintendent of Cloud Platforms at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have issues with reporting, troubleshooting, and analytics. AWS WAF needs to bring costs down. 

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DS
Jefe subdepartamento Operaciones at a government with 10,001+ employees

We haven't faced any problems with the solution. I can't speak to any missing features. Every aspect of it has been quite good.

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LD
Regional Security Team Lead at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

This solution could be improved if the configuration steps were more specific to WAF, compared to other cloud services. 

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TM
AWS Security Specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The service itself is fine. On the UI side, I would like it if they could bring back the conditions view which had geo match, IP sets and etc. When using WAF classic you could see this option on the left side of the console. Currently IP sets and regex strings is there but geo match does not seem to be included, not sure if geo matching is still supported.

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Uddeshya Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Product Engineer at SecLogic Limited

The cost must be reduced.

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AS
Network Analyst

I would like them to fortify the system more. In every software platform there are issues or bugs, even though presently, there aren't many known and it is running without problems.

They have to do more to improve, to innovate more features. They need to increase the security. It has to be more active in detecting threats. It's better for the system if the platform is more proactive in detecting threats immediately, so that technicians or people on the security team will know that a threat is coming in.

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RB
Engineer at a renewables & environment company with 501-1,000 employees

I think there's a lot wrong with AWS WAF. Here are the two main areas where I think it could be improved:

Blocking: We don't have much control over blocking, because the WAF is managed by AWS. What happens is that they will put down the rules on their side and we don't have proper visibility on that. So we'll have to track down the issues and see what is wrong or not. For example, with IP address blocking, it's difficult to find out which IPs are getting blocked. If we managed our own WAF completely, we wouldn't have this kind of problem. Right now, this aspect is half managed by us, and half managed by AWS. Because of this, I think it would be far more helpful to us if we went for our own tool instead.

Automation: As in, a lot of separate blocks if something goes wrong. For example, every company will have their own rules for automation, in terms of their goals for the product. Like, "I want my WAF to do this. I want my WAF to do that." But that's the kind of thing that I think we will only see when we do some POCs with our clients. 

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CL
Senior Information Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In a future release I would like to see automation. There's no interaction between the applications and that makes it tedious. We have to do the preparation all over again for each of our other applications.

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it_user1376373 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud security Consultant at 8KMiles

There isn't room for improvement per se. the cloud is constantly evolving and changing however, so we'll see what the future brings.

When users choose the free service, there isn't great support available to them. This is because, when it comes to any issues, due to the fact that it says that when the rules are defined by the users, it becomes their responsibility. When there are any problems or threats, which don't get mitigated or the threat is not being properly managed, since the rules are owned by the user, they take responsibility for everything. It would be helpful if AWS could take a bit of responsibility here and help users understand where things went wrong.

Support wise, I don't think they are that good compared to individual vendors. When it comes to vendors, it becomes their product, and being a product owner, they take more responsibility and ownership of issues. AWS doesn't do that at all.

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BM
Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

The user experience, the interface, is lacking. Sometimes it's hard to find certain areas that it has alerted on. Also, more fine-tuning would be convenient.

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AF
Advisory and IT Transformation Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The solution could be faster in detecting threats.

They should work to define more threats, add more security, and make it more compliant with more security companies.

The solution could always be more automated.

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JP
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I would like to be able to view a graphical deployment map in the user interface that will give me an overview of the configuration and help to determine whether I have missed any steps.

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RH
President at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The complexity of deploying turnkey solutions could be simplified.  

They actually have too many different things that you can tinker with and too many different ways to do the same thing. It may be helpful if the product were to be more directed and if it used best practices with technical and non-technical users in mind.  

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it_user753234 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Governance at PeerSpot

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to check the rules because when you apply a rule, sometimes it's too much and we need to rewrite the rules and make compromises on the rules because it will block too many things. It's a bit difficult to apply the right rules for the right security.

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MK
Principal Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The solution could improve by having better rules, they are very basic at the moment. There are more attacks coming and we have to use third-party solutions, such as FIA. The features are not sufficient to prevent all the attacks, such as DDoS. Overall the solution should be more secure.

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FP
Developer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

In a future release of this solution, I would like to see additional management features to make things simpler.

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ZF
Cloud architect at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

I would like to see it more tightly integrated with other AWS services.

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VU
Founder at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

We need more support as we go global.

The UI could use improvement.

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AS
IT Auditor & Compliance Officer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

The serverless product from AWS WAF could be improved. For example, they have only one serverless series, Lambda, but they should extend and improve it. Additionally, the firewall rules are not very easy to configure.

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Buyer's Guide
AWS WAF
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about AWS WAF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.