Barracuda Launches Web Application Firewall as a Service

Barracuda is making its Web Application Firewall platform available in a cloud-delivered model that benefits from a new management interface and improved configuration. Barracuda Networks announced its cloud-delivered Web Application Firewall (WAF) service on May 16, providing organizations with a new approach to managing and deploying application security. The Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service offering builds on the company's existing WAF products, which include both physical and virtual appliances. The cloud-delivered version of the WAF, however, offers organizations new ways to manage, deploy and integrate application security into an application delivery stack. "With the existing WAFs that we had, you would still have to go in—and whether it's physical or virtual—you would still have to set up the machine, give it an IP address, connect it to the network, manage the policies and deal with failover," Nitzan Miron, vice president of Product Management for Application Security Services at Barracuda, told eWEEK. "With WAF-as-a-Service, we take all the complexity and do it for customers." A WAF is a type of firewall that is purpose-built to help defend against application-layer threats and attacks. WAFs can be used to protect against known vulnerabilities in applications, including input validation and SQL injection types of risks.