According to the 2018 Application Protection Report, most organizations have in use an average of 765 web applications in their business activities – and these applications are the initial target of data breaches a massive 53% of the time.
When you think about the amount of effort you put into your general computer cybersecurity, this vulnerability from a place you might not have expected should come as a big red flag.
An attack on your web apps can not only lead to confidential data being accessed, but it can also affect the performance of your business when critical applications need downtime.
What forms do web app attacks take
The most prevalent threats organizations face to their web apps today come in the form of:
- Automated attacks and bots that overwhelm existing security solutions.
- Web attacks that steal credentials and gain unauthorized access across user accounts.
- Application layer attack (or DDoS attack) targets specific vulnerabilities or issues in the app, to stop it working as it should.
- New attack surfaces and threats due to the rapid adoption of APIs.
How will this affect you?
The main risks associated with these types of attack include downtime, fraud, loss of data, financial penalties, and loss of reputation. Bot attacks can affect app/workload performance ability (quality of service) by slowing or bringing down the service by flooding it with erroneous requests. Malicious hackers gaining access to your data can also lead to confidentiality breaches, password data dumps and much more.
How can you prevent attacks on your web apps?
F5’a Web Application Firewalls (WAF) can protect web applications from attacks. They act like shields for your apps, protecting vulnerabilities in your system from attack.
Web Application Firewalls protects web applications from a myriad of threats by acting as a critical stop gap, inspecting application requests and responses to mitigate a broad spectrum of risks, including those in the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) Top 10 vulnerabilities.
WAF comes as part of our Web App and API Protection (WAAP) solution – that offers security for your apps and APIs and in addition – protects and account logins from bot attacks and keeps your system safe from service attacks aiming to flood your system with requests and shut it down.
F5, in partnership with AdEPT is one of the most comprehensive advanced WAAPs you can choose. We can help improve visibility and Web App and API Protection (WAAP).
To learn more about our F5 application security solutions and how they can help secure your web apps and APIs, get in touch to find out more or request a demo.
