Cloudways Web Application Firewall (WAF): Boost Site Security

Let’s take an example of a departmental store in a crowded market. While it’s open for everyone to explore, you want to keep unwanted troublemakers out. That’s where web security comes in. As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, protecting your data with CloudWays’ Web Application FireWall has never been more crucial.

We know how much website security is important when it comes to online business or even sending or receiving payments! As per the recent report, 70% of the website owners experience security breaches and data loss in 2023. 

So, What could be the reason? Could it be the number of hackers that have increased their operations to a great level? No, it is simply a result of consistent web plugin failure!

Seeing that WordPress security plugins still find a challenge in detecting and eliminating certain online threats, we have brought to you one-stop website security solution and that is none other than Web Application Firewall by CloudWays.

Now, What’s Web Application FireWall by CloudWays? How does it protect your website? How to enable Web Application Firewall on CloudWays’ dashboard? We’re gonna answer all your related doubts here, in this article. 

So, without wasting even a single second, Let’s read the article further!

What is a Web Application Firewall (WAF)?

Exclusively for readers having zero idea about web application firewall, it’s a specialized security tool designed to monitor and filter incoming traffic to your website. 

In other words, it is like your security guard, shielding your website from malicious online attacks like SQL injections and cross-site scripting. 

So what’s with traditional firewalls? Are they insufficient to protect your website? 

No, traditional firewalls focus on network-level protection only whereas, a WAF, that is a Web Application Firewall specifically protects the application layer, which happens to be the heart of your website where most of the user interactions and data exchanges take place.

Now, here at Cloudways, you get next-level web application security, thanks to robust and user-friendly WAF features. 

Let’s dive in and explore how this cutting-edge tool ensures safety and high protection to your website?

How Does a WAF Protect Your Website?

To understand how WAF works to protect your website, Imagine it as a highly trained GateKeeper. So the way a gatekeeper guards the entry point and never allows any stranger to enter, similarly WAP scrutinizes every request sent to your website, blocking harmful activities like, few of the most popular attacks happens to be:

So, what role does a WAP play here? It simply identifies and neutralizes these cyber threats in real-time. It prevents your website from falling victim to data breaches and downtime.

Did you just see? WAP does a lot to save your website from losing data and maintain it without compromising Uptime and website performance. If that is so, then What traditional Firewalls are used for? What is the difference in installing WAP and Traditional Firewall?

Check out the key difference between WAF and Traditional Firewalls!

See! The difference is so basic. It’s just like upgrading from a simple lock on your door to an intelligent alarm system that knows who belongs inside and who doesn’t.

Cloudways and Web Application Firewall

Do you know? CloudWays integrates a powerful and strong web application firewall to ensure Fully unmatched security for your websites and applications. 

No matter whatever projects you’re running online, be it a blogging website, an online store or a customized application, CloudWays’ WAP always shields your website against the latest cyber threats.

So, What sort of technology and mechanism does CloudWay’s WAF back? What makes this simple feature provide advanced protection? This question might be troubling you, so we have an answer to this.

Web application Firewall uses the latest security protocol, such as instant threat detection and machine learning, in order to adapt to harmful and in other words, scalable cyber attack patterns. 

Second of all, WAF is also backed by a best-in-class infrastructure that ensures your website stays online and secure 24/7 even during 2X Times traffic periods.

Want to know how easy it is to use or to integrate WAP to your website? It’s as simple as eating food. CloudWays’ easy integration speaks loud and clear that SECURITY SHOULDN’T BE COMPLICATED.

In just a few clicks from your CloudWays’ DashBoard, you can easily enable WAF! Managing security settings is really simple making it effortless for the non-tech users to stay secured and keep their websites highly protected.

Key Benefits of Cloudways (WAF)

If you wanna get a complete picture of how CloudWays’ Web Application Firewall can be useful? Then in that case, we’ve listed few of the benefits that a user’s gonna get after WAF’s integration with the website:

Enhanced Security

The first and the foremost thing is that your website gets incredible security! With Cloudways’ WAF, your website is 100% secured against the top most issues like SQL injection, XSS, and more that are identified by OWASP, an organization that improves software security.

Performance Optimization

We all know that a website is visited by all sorts of people. Some of them are hackers and the others are reliable visitors. So, CloudWays’ WAF helps your website by blocking malicious traffic to ensure that only legitimate users access your site. This in turn reduces server load and keeps your website great in performance.

Real-Time Monitoring

For those who do not understand what RealTime monitoring means, it refers to instant surveillance and mitigation of even an ounce of issue within no time. With CloudWays’ WAF, you get a chance to stay one-step ahead of cyber threats, thanks to 24/7 regular server monitoring. The WAF also adopts several ways to protect sites against emerging risks.

Easy WAF Integration

CloudWays’ WAF configuration has been tailored to fit newbies’ comfortability. Even if you have no server related knowledge and have no idea how to integrate plugins, then in that case, CloudWays’ WAF integration to your hosting account is the easiest thing, as there’s no manual or complex settings required to integrate WAF.

Features of Cloudways (WAF)

Now, altogether in a nutshell, we have gathered a handful of features that CloudWays’ WAF offers if integrated to your website. Want to know about it? If so, then stay-tuned and read the points mentioned below:

Application-Specific Protection

First of all, each application or website on your server gets fully customized protection. Let’s say you’re running a business WordPress, Magento or in Laravel, CloudWays’ WAF offers you the best available security.

Automated Threat Analysis and Updates

CloudWays’ WAF automatically analyzes the potential threats that make your server vulnerable and then treats the attacks thereby protecting your website in real-time. Moreover, WAF updates its threat database continuously to defend against the latest cyber attacks, so your website is always protected.

Layered Security

Get an extra-layer of security, thanks to CloudWays’ WAF pairing with other features, such as the Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, provides an additional defense, enhancing both security and performance. This further ensures that your website is highly protected against all sorts of cyber attacks big or small.

Logging and Analytics

Knowing server analytics, in other words, checking how your server is performing, CPU/ RAM/ Memory and all is possible with CloudWays’ WAF. You can easily monitor cyber threats, track server performance, and even gain valuable insights using which you can take immediate actions to secure your server.

Use Cases

Wow! CloudWays’ WAF amazing features and its benefits can ensure greater performance and highest form of security. So, don’t you think where we can use such an incredible security technology? To answer this question, we have listed 3 primary applications, where using WAF can give you immense advantage:

WooCommerce Stores

Absolutely! You can use this amazing CloudWays’ WAF in your e-commerce store to protect sensitive clients data and even ensure that your online transactions are highly secured.

High-Traffic WordPress Blogs

Secondly, you can integrate a web application firewall, featured by CloudWays, to your high-traffic wordpress blogs in order to keep your blog accessible to readers worldwide without worrying about hacking attempts.

Custom Applications

And thirdly, you can also use it to safeguard custom applications built on frameworks like Laravel or Magento, fully ensuring data integrity and high level security for your users.

How to Enable WAF on Cloudways

Eager to use WAF integration of CloudWays? Good! Below, we have listed the step-by-step guideline on how you can easily enable WAF on your CloudWays’ dashboard: 

If you follow the above provided steps, your WAF gets fully integrated to your site. Now, regularly review your WAF logs to configure the rules plus you can enable the additional features like rate limiting to block abusive traffic as well.

Comparison with Other Hosting Providers

Maybe you have a question in mind, Why Cloudways Stands Out? What makes CloudWays’ WAF security plugin so special? 

If you’re thinking so, then understand the fact that all the hosting providers out there offer generic, in other words, basic security tools. 

And now, on the other hand CloudWays offer seamless integration with WAF, specifically tailored for application-level protection. It also ensures that your website not only stays secure but also performs optimally.

Second of all, CloudWays’ WAF offers better performance and high-level security. 

With an amazing combination of advanced threat detection, automatic updates, and ease of use, Cloudways’ WAF delivers high value plus extra level security as compared to all the other traditional web hosting providers.

Testimonials and Case Studies

Want to know what other users think of using CloudWays’ WAF plugin integration and how amazingly it works? We have a number of testimonials that users have given to share their wonderful experience in using this amazing plugin integration. 

After enabling CloudWays’ WAF, users saw a reduction in malicious online traffic. Websites run smoother than ever. 

Moreover, it has also been reported that CloudWays’ WAF saves blogging websites from a massive XSS attack. Plus the real-time monitoring is really a game-changer.

It is also seen in websites using CloudWays’ WAF that there has been a significant drop in security incidents and it has 2X the performance metrics within weeks of its implementation.

Conclusion

Your website is your online identity plus your hard work as well! 

There’s a big need to keep the websites as secure as possible from the cyber attacks of various online hackers. So in such a case, when online security of your website or application becomes of prior importance, then in that case, CloudWays’ WAF is the only way out.

Here, in this article, we just talked about what CloudWays’ WAF is, what its uses are and how you can easily install this plugin to your hosting account with proper guidelines and screenshots. Not only that, we’ve also discussed its use cases, telling you the fields where you can immensely reap WAF’s benefits.

CloudWay’s WAF is your online defense against evolving cyber threats and potential attacks. With Cloudways’ WAF, you get best-in-class protection, simple server integration, and ultimate peace of mind hosting as well. 

So, Are you ready to secure your website and elevate its performance? If so, then start your 3-days free trial with Cloudways today and experience unparalleled security!