AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Akamai App and API Protector and AWS WAF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed AWS WAF vs. Akamai App and API Protector Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Can you share your experience on migration from Akamai Kona Site to Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF?
Answer: From people who have helped customers migrate from Akamai Services to Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF, here's information on the migration process: The migration process may involve the following steps, as reported by others: Assess your current Akamai configuration, including identifying all of the content you deliver through Akamai and any specific rules or settings you are using. Design your new Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF configuration, including choosing the right Amazon CloudFront distribution type, configuring caching and delivery settings, and creating AWS WAF rules to protect your content. Migrate your content to Amazon CloudFront by uploading files to Amazon CloudFront or using a CloudFront Content Delivery Network (CDN) migration tool. Once your content has been migrated to Amazon CloudFront, you must update your DNS records to point to Amazon CloudFront instead of Akamai. Once your DNS records have been updated, test your new Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF configuration to ensure it works as expected. Many have shared that their experience using Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF has been positive and that Amazon CloudFront is a reliable and scalable CDN you could use to deliver content to users worldwide with high performance. At the same time, AWS WAF is a powerful Web Application Firewall that can protect your content from various attacks.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers.""Akamai Web Application Protector is a good solution that provides basic web application protection.""Everything will be handled by Akamai's system before it reaches our infrastructure.""All the solution's features are very good.""The solution easily identifies, delays, or allows business traffic.""I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems.""The most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it.""The solution can scale extremely well."

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"We do not have to maintain the solution.""One common use case is using detection protection for enhancing security models in AWS. Another use case is implementing log analysis and response recovery procedures for email services.""Their technical support has been quite good.""The most valuable feature is the addition of managed tools that help us create customizable rules. In case we want to block a particular request, we can make use of those rules.""Stable and scalable web application firewall. Setting it up is straightforward.""The most valuable feature is that it is very easy to configure. It just takes a couple of minutes.""The access instruction feature is the most valuable. This is what we use the most.""The customizable features are good."

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Cons
"The performance of the cloud monitoring tool is low.""We are experimenting with EdgeWorkers to write our own code at the Edge level. It could grow to be much better.""The WAF features definitely have a lot of room for improvement. A lot of the WAF is really basic. For some products or some of our solutions, we need to run a second layer of more advanced WAF. If it had better layer seven protection then we would not need a second WAF.""The product should provide a secure NTP.""Akamai needs to focus on quickly responding to risks, even those that may potentially be of zero threat..Maybe some of the documentation is a little confusing. They have a lot of different places where you can go to get information, and some of the information is quite out of date.""In terms of precedence of Akamai rules, the last one is implemented. That is the one that is operational. If two rules contradict, the last one is implemented. We had a clash, but it was really tough to find that out. I would like to have a rulebook because, in their architecture documentation, it is not mentioned anywhere that if two rules clash, the last one works, and if it does not work, then what to do. This is something we were debating today with their tech support. With AWS, we get documents for the issues so that they do not occur in the future. Akamai's support and knowledge base needs to be improved.""The custom rules must be improved.""Customer support has room for improvement."

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"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.""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.""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.""The product should improve the DDoS-related features.""We have issues with reporting, troubleshooting, and analytics. AWS WAF needs to bring costs down.""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.""On the UI side, I would like it if they could bring back the geolocation view on the corner.""We should be able to do proper whitelisting."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
  • "The price they are offering is quite reasonable for premium customers, but it's very expensive if you're a small and medium-sized enterprises."
  • "Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
  • "The solution is not expensive."
  • "The product’s price is high."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • "Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."
  • "Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
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  • "It's an annual subscription."
  • "There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "There are different scale options available for WAF."
  • "AWS is not that costly by comparison. They are maybe close to $40 per month. I think it was between $29 or $39."
  • "It has a variable pricing scheme."
  • "We are kind of doing a POC comparison to see what works best. Pricing-wise, AWS is one of the most attractive ones. It is fairly cheap, and we like the pricing part. We're trying to see what makes more sense operation-wise, license-wise, and pricing-wise."
  • "It's quite affordable. It's in the middle."
  • "The pricing should be more affordable, especially as it pertains to small clients."
  • More AWS WAF Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The custom rules must be improved. If we have a domain to be monitored, we can use the solution to alert us if a certain specification is met. If we need only 20,000 transactions, but there are 40,000… more »
    Top Answer:Hi Varun I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Imperva WAF 2. F5 WAF 3. Polarisec Cloud WAF Typical limitations on cloud WAF… more »
    Top Answer:Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit for… more »
    Top Answer:AWS WAF helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection that happen within the retail industry.
    Ranking
    Views
    5,326
    Comparisons
    4,060
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    669
    Rating
    8.6
    Views
    18,216
    Comparisons
    14,268
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    407
    Rating
    8.5
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
    AWS Web Application Firewall
    Learn More
    Overview

    Akamai App & API Protector brings together web application firewall, bot mitigation, API security, and Layer 7 DDoS protection into a single solution. It quickly identifies vulnerabilities and mitigates threats across your entire web and API estates — even for the most complex distributed architectures. Recognized as the leading attack detection solution on the market, App & API Protector is easy to implement and use. It delivers automatic updates for security protections and provides holistic visibility into traffic and attacks.

    AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a firewall security system that monitors incoming and outgoing traffic for applications and websites based on your pre-defined web security rules. AWS WAF defends applications and websites from common Web attacks that could otherwise damage application performance and availability and compromise security.

    You can create rules in AWS WAF that can include blocking specific HTTP headers, IP addresses, and URI strings. These rules prevent common web exploits, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting. Once defined, new rules are deployed within seconds, and can easily be tracked so you can monitor their effectiveness via real-time insights. These saved metrics include URIs, IP addresses, and geo locations for each request.

    AWS WAF Features

    Some of the solution's top features include:

    • Web traffic filtering: Get an extra layer of security by creating a centralized set of rules, easily deployable across multiple websites. These rules filter out web traffic based on conditions like HTTP headers, URIs, and IP addresses. This is very helpful for protection against exploits such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting as well as attacks from third-party applications.
    • Bot control: Malicious bot traffic can consume excessive resources and cause downtime. Gain visibility and control over bot traffic with a managed rule group. You can easily block harmful bots, such as scrapers and crawlers, and you can allow common bots, like search engines and status monitors.
    • Fraud prevention: Effectively defend your application against bot attacks by monitoring your application’s login page with a managed rule group that prevents hackers from accessing user accounts using compromised credentials. The managed rule group helps protect against credential stuffing attacks, brute-force login attempts, and other harmful login activities.
    • API for AWS WAF Management: Automatically create and maintain rules and integrate them into your development process.
    • Metrics for real-time visibility: Receive real-time metrics and captures of raw requests with details about geo-locations, IP addresses, URIs, user agents, and referrers. Integrate seamlessly with Amazon CloudWatch to set up custom alarms when events or attacks occur. These metrics provide valuable data intelligence that can be used to create new rules that significantly improve your application protections.
    • Firewall management: AWS Firewall Manager automatically scans and notifies the security team when there is a policy violation, so they can swiftly take action. When new resources are created, your security team can guarantee that they comply with your organization’s security rules.

    Reviews from Real Users

    AWS WAF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its user-friendly interface and its integration capabilities.

    Kavin K., a security analyst at M2P Fintech, writes, “I believe the most impressive features are integration and ease of use. The best part of AWS WAF is the cloud-native WAF integration. There aren't any hidden deployments or hidden infrastructure which we have to maintain to have AWS WAF. AWS maintains everything; all we have to do is click the button, and WAF will be activated. Any packet coming through the internet will be filtered through.”

    Sample Customers
    Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
    eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm26%
    Retailer16%
    Leisure / Travel Company11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Insurance Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company26%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Media Company9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business35%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise64%
    Buyer's Guide
    AWS WAF vs. Akamai App and API Protector
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about AWS WAF vs. Akamai App and API Protector and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Akamai App and API Protector is ranked 9th in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 17 reviews while AWS WAF is ranked 1st in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 30 reviews. Akamai App and API Protector is rated 8.4, while AWS WAF is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Akamai App and API Protector writes "A tool helpful for mitigating cyber threats while providing excellent technical support to its users ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of AWS WAF writes "Easy to deploy, implement, and manage". Akamai App and API Protector is most compared with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Prolexic, AWS Shield and Cloudflare, whereas AWS WAF is most compared with Azure Web Application Firewall, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Imperva Web Application Firewall, F5 Advanced WAF and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. See our AWS WAF vs. Akamai App and API Protector report.

    See our list of best Web Application Firewall (WAF) vendors.

    We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.