Web Application & API Protection

WAAP is a platform-oriented, application runtime security approach that combines web application firewall (WAF), API discovery, API testing, API protection, and bot & abuse protection to defend web applications and APIs from modern attacks.

Traditional web application firewall (WAF) focuses primarily on web application attacks that occur through web protocols (HTTP/HTTPS), web UI interactions, and client-side JavaScript interactions with backend systems. If you expose APIs, run microservices, or see automated abuse, a WAAP platform adds API security controls and bot protection that most legacy WAF products don’t cover well.

WAAP platforms extend coverage to APIs with continuous API discovery, sensitive data flow analysis, continous vulnerability checking, API threat protection, and bot & abuse mitigation within a unified platform so you can detect and protect against application as well as API attacks.

WAAP platforms help prevent SQL injection (SQLi), cross-site scripting (XSS), bruteforcing, credential stuffing, account takeover (ATO), business logic abuse, transaction fraud, bot attacks, and application-layer denial-of-service (DoS) attacks targeting web applications and APIs.

Yes, WAAP platforms typically address OWASP API Security Top 10 risks with a combination of authentication and authorization checks, sensitive data flow analysis, threat detection, rate limiting, anomaly detection, and abuse protection. Risks also extend to unsafe third-party API consumption and API inventory management, which require a WAAP platform that offers continuous API discovery and data flow analysis across environments.

Most WAAP platforms include capabilities to detect and block malicious automation, or bots, like web scraping, credential stuffing, and transaction fraud, while allowing good forms of automation such as agentic AI and robotic process automation (RPA).

WAAP platforms may deploy as cloud services (SaaS) or integration with a content delivery networks (CDN) at the edge. Stronger WAAP platforms provide multiple deployment options that support hybrid- and multi-cloud strategies, so you can protect web applications and APIs across environment types. This includes in-line deployment options like API gateway integration, sidecar containers,  and instrumentation agents (e.g., eBPF) as well as other out-of-bound options like traffic mirroring.

Yes, some WAAP solutions work with Kubernetes by integrating with ingress controllers, deploying as sidecar containers in clusters, or instrumenting application workloads (e.g., eBPF) to provide additional layers of application and API protection for microservices traffic, sometimes referred to as inner-service or east/west (E/W) traffic.

WAAP platforms typically inspect HTTPS traffic via TLS termination at the edge or proxies in different points of a system architecture. TLS termination enables application and API threat detection without sacrificing secure transport. WAAP platforms may also instrument application workloads directly (e.g., eBPF) before any transport encryption is in effect.

WAAP platforms do not replace an API gateway’s access control enforcement, intelligent routing, rate/use limiting, versioning, and lifecycle management commonly seen in API management platforms. However, WAAP complements API gateways and API management with dedicated API discovery, API threat protection, and bot & abuse protection.