Akamai Implements WAF
Akamai announced that they are adding Web Application Firewall (WAF) capabilities into their distributed EdgePlatform netwok. I usually quote from the articles I reference, but there is simply too much posturing and fluffy marketing-ese about value propositions for me to extract an insightful fragment of information on what they are doing and why it is important, so I will paraphrase. In a nutshell they have ported ModSecurity onto/into the Akamai Edge Server. They are using the Core Rule Set to form the basis of their policy set. As content is pulled from the Akamai cache servers, the request is examined for XSS, SQL Injection, response splitting, and other injection attacks, as well as some error conditions indicative of tampering. Do I think this is a huge advancement to security? Not really. At least not at the outset. But I think it’s a good idea in the long run. Akamai edge servers are widely used by large commercial vendors and content providers, who are principal targets for many specific XSS attacks. In essence you are distributing Web Application Firewall rules, and enforcing as requests are made for the distributed/cached content. The ModSecurity policy set has been around for a long time and will provide basic protections, but it leaves quite a gap in meaningful coverage. Don’t get me wrong, the rule set covers many of the common attacks and they are proven to be effective. However, the value of a WAF is in the quality of the rule set, and how appropriate those rules are to the specific web application. Rule sets are really hard to get right, and must be updated with the same frequency as your web site content. As you add new pages or functions, you are adding and updating rules. I think the announcement is important, though, is because I believe it marks the beginning of a trend. We hear far too many complaints about WAF hindering applications, as well as the expense of rule set development and maintenance. The capability is valuable, but the coverage needs to get better, management needs to be easier, and the costs need to come down. I believe this is a model we will see more of because: Security is embedded into the service. With many ‘Cloud’ and SaaS offerings being offered, most with nebulous benefits, it’s clear that those who use Akamai are covered from the basic attacks, and the analysis is done on the Akamai network, so your servers remain largely unburdened. Just as with out-sourcing the processing overhead associated with anti-spam into the cloud, you are letting the cloud absorb the overhead of SQL Injection detection. And like Anti-virus, it’s only going to catch a subset of the attacks. Commoditization of WAF service. Let’s face it, SaaS and cloud models are more efficient because you commoditize a resource and then leverage the capability across a much larger number of customers. WAF rules are hard to set up, so if I can leverage attack knowledge across hundreds or thousands of sites, the cost goes down. We are not quite there yet, but the possibility of relieving your organization from needing these skills in-house is very attractive for the SME segment. The SME segment is not really using Akamai EdgeServers, so what I am talking about is generic WAF in the cloud, but the model fits really well with outsourced and managed service models. Specific, tailored WAF rules will be the add-on service for those who choose not to build defenses into the web application or maintain their own WAF. The knowledge that Akamai can gather and return to WAF & web security vendors provides invaluable analysis on emerging attacks. The statistics, trend data, and metrics they have access to offer security researchers a wealth of information – which can be leveraged to thwart specific attacks and augment firewall rules. So this first baby step is not all that exciting, but I think it’s a logical progression for WAF service in the cloud, and one we will see a lot more of. Share:
