With increasing cybersecurity risks prevailing everywhere, technologies like WAF effectively keep attackers at bay. But if you don’t use any security technologies, you can risk your website, applications, and network to attackers. As a result, you may lose your data and customer trust, enough to cause losses in terms of reputation and finances. But if you use security technologies like G-Core Labs WAF, you can enhance your organization’s security posture and safeguard your data, network, and resources. In this article, I’ll review G-Core Labs WAF and help you decide whether you should invest in it or not.
G-Core Labs WAF: An Overview
G-Core Labs WAF is a robust, modern solution to protect your web applications, website, and API from bots and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. A leader in the CDN space, G-Core Labs is known for providing services with outstanding performance, functionality, and security at an affordable price. As cybersecurity risks are growing each day, security solutions such as a web application firewall are necessary to ensure only legitimate traffic is allowed in and out of your web app and sites. It aims to provide security from unauthorized access and hacking of your data. It’s not wise to block all the IP addresses, ports, and protocols because it would mean blocking legitimate traffic as well. Therefore, you need a quality protection system to analyze data packets and allow only those that are legitimate. G-Core Labs’s WAF is excellent at it. It provides not only fully-fledged security but also useful features to enhance its functionality. Along with detecting and preventing attacks on web apps and sites in time, it also reduces the likelihood of attackers exploiting your vulnerabilities. Some of its customers are Avast, Redfox Games, TEDx, Sandbox Interactive, Bandai Namco, online retailers AWOK, Joom, etc.
G-Core Labs WAF: Features
Here are some of the features of G-Core Labs WAF:
L7 Protection
The application layer is at the top of the OSI model and is important since it interacts with the users. And protection at this layer is also crucial because if an attack happens, it would risk your users’ data and application availability. It may disrupt the stable operation and cause your reputation to tarnish. G-Core Labs WAF provides you with application layer (L7) protection from DDoS attacks. The attackers might try to render the responsiveness of your server by flooding it with an overwhelming number of requests than it can handle. But with G-Core Labs WAF, you can deter these risks. It will neutralize attackers, even those that are of low frequencies on your websites and apps, which many other security solutions fail to detect.
NG-WAF by Wallarm
You will get WAllarm-powered NG-WAF to enable protection from manual hacking attempts to detect and exploit loopholes and vulnerabilities in your site without using a third-party SDK or performing code changes in your application. Instead of getting into these complexities, leave everything to NG-WAF by Wallarm and stay relaxed, knowing your sites and APIs are safe.
Real-Time Bot Prevention
Attacks deploy malicious bots that crawl everywhere to find vulnerabilities and perform fraud. Using G-Core Labs WAF, you will get bot protection in real-time to prevent ad frauds, parsing, and data theft of your customers. As a result, not only can you safeguard your systems and data but also uphold your customers’ trust in you and keep your head high in the industry.
Supports HTTP/2, Web Sockets, and IPv6
G-Core Labs support the latest protocols and technologies to increase security. Instead of supporting just the plain HTTP and IPv4, it supports the latest versions of HTTP/2 and IPv6. It also supports web sockets to enable two-way interaction between the clients and the server – a full-duplex connection. It facilitates faster communication, performance optimization, and true concurrency to result in rich and responsive web apps.
Supports HTTPS
Using HTTPS instead of HTTP offers more security to your website, applications, and API. You can do it by enabling an SSL certificate on your systems. There are many free and paid SSL certificates available that you can choose from. Instead of HTTP offers more security to your website, applications, and API. You can do it by enabling an SSL certificate on your systems. There are many free and paid SSL certificates available that you can choose from. But if you use G-Core Labs WAF, they support HTTPS and give you the option of whether you want to disclose the SSL certificates or not. As a result, your site and applications would be deemed safer, and people would love accessing it for their use.
Load Balancing
Load balancing helps distribute incoming web traffic among backend servers in a way that optimizes capacity utilization and speed. This also ensures no single server is overloaded with requests it can’t fulfill. An overworked server can exhibit poor performance and user experience. This is why G-Core Labs WAF offers efficient load balancing, such as IP hash, Weighted Round Robin, and Round Robin. It will help ensure all your servers, including the main servers and backend servers, perform well and process requests. This will also help enhance the user experience.
Statistics
You will get detailed statistics of everything going on in your application, site, or API security-wise. It will highlight the abnormalities detected by the WAF and blocked risk and attacks as well. This way, you can measure how well the WAF is working out for you and whether your investment is worth it or not.
IP Allowlists and Blocklists
G-Core Labs WAF supports IP blocklists and allowlists so that you can define who is allowed to access your application, API, and website and who can’t. If you detect some suspicious IP address wanting to break into your system, you can add them to the blocklists so that they can never enter your systems. Similarly, you can create a list of IP addresses that are important to you and are genuine so that you can always permit them to access your site or app.
API Security
G-Core Labs WAF protects your APIs from OWASP Top 10 security issues, credential stuffing, and API abuse. Hence, whether APIs you develop or use, you can secure its data and stay secure. In addition, you will get JSON-based API support, such as REST and CRUD, along with custom APIs. IT also supports custom XML-based APIs and XMLRPC.
G-Core Labs WAF: How Does It Work?
G-Core Labs has a cloud platform with its own web traffic filtering centers located in Europe, the USA, and Asia. Each of its nodes can process a minimum of several hundred Gbps of active web traffic, making the grand total of over dozens Tbps active traffic filtering. In addition, it has connected its nodes to various service providers across the globe who maintain backup copies of each of its systems and data. Hence, all the data housed in its managing servers, cleaning servers, network equipment, and data storage systems are perfectly safe. Once you enroll with G-Core Labs WAF, you don’t need to protect your infrastructure yourself. They will do that for you so you can relax. They will ensure nothing can hinder your business processes. Even if something goes wrong for any reason, your customers and users won’t know about it since they will experience the same high-level performance. Let’s understand the steps by step process of how their unique security technology works.
Analyzing Resources
G-Core Labs WAF performs resource load analysis in real-time. It helps detect any statistical abnormality. Upon finding any issue at this point, it quickly blocks and keeps your systems secure.
Technical Analysis
The WAF performs technical analysis of each new request received. It offers a deeper understanding of the data packets a client has sent and looks for any underlying issue that might be lurking.
Behavioral Factor Recognition
The WAF analyses the client’s behavior and who has sent the data packet. It begins if they have sent multiple queries within a given period during monitoring. It could be the time between a subquery and query.
Query Check
Next, the protection system checks the query against suspicious digital signatures relevant in real-time for the resource. The WAF checks the query for both proximity and coincidence cases.
Query Validation
After performing all the checks and analyses, the protection system combines all the information into a one-factor vector. This calculates the validity of each query. As a result, the WAF will conclude whether or not the query must be given a pass into your network, system, or application. If it passes the validation, the query will go inside your network and return the information asked. But if it doesn’t, the query will be blocked right away. Furthermore, G-Core Labs WAF uses:
Proactive filter: It can block a majority of attacks and works with large traffic volumes. Its unsupervised training algorithms can reduce false positives.Vulnerability detection system: It detects underlying security errors within your web apps. It also offers data about identified vulnerabilities and recommends eliminating those issues.Virtual pathing system safeguards apps from security vulnerabilities by identifying and blocking threats and hackings in real-time.
G-Core Labs WAF: Support
Customer support is an important factor if you choose any service provider. You may run into trouble at any time, and if you don’t know how to fix it, customer support will help you. G-Core Labs has knowledgeable and experienced engineers to help you when you need it. They are professional yet friendly to extend help no matter how complex your queries are. You can reach them via email, ticket, and chat. If you choose the STARTER plan, you can avail of their 8/5 customer support, and if you pick higher plans you will get 24/7 support. In addition, you can refer to their knowledge base to seek answers to some common questions.
G-Core Labs WAF: Use Cases
Here are some of the use cases where you can use G-Core Labs WAF.
Banks
The banking sector is heavily targeted by attackers. They may steal your databases with password and login combinations to access your systems. They can also hack accounts, acquire debit card and credit card information, and resell the data. Attackers can even conduct fraud with credits and coupons. Hence, if you want to secure your data and systems, you need robust bank-grade technologies. G-Core Labs comes to the rescue here. Banks can leverage G-Core Labs WAF to monitor singular requests, detect cyber threats, and mitigate attacks. It will block bots trying to access passwords and logins.
Ad Networks
Malicious bots are everywhere on the web and are also spamming ad networks. They can hamper the credibility of ad networks, supply users with harmful ads and links, and trick them into revealing their information. Using G-Core Labs, WAF will help detect risky traffic and automatically block the source generating ad impressions for bots. It will clean your paid web traffic and analyze low-quality sources to optimize your marketing budget.
Online Stores
Ecommerce businesses are also targeted by attackers since they attract a lot of visitors and, during sales times, are flooded with visitors. This increases the opportunities for attackers to flood the servers with illegitimate traffic and conduct attacks. They will also flood larger avenues to exploit user data at such times. Plus, without protection, parsers can freely collect data about your pricing and supply data to your competitors. So, online stores can use G-Core Labs WAF to detect bot queries and block them. It helps provide reliable protection from attackers and competitors alike. It will also safeguard sales by closing manipulators using fake purchases.
Media Resources
Media resources like new channels, blogs, social media platforms, etc., are another favorite spot for attackers. They are always buzzing with users who visit those sites to seek information and entertainment. Articles, infographics, photos, comments, descriptions, etc., generate sales, boost search results, and improve the brand’s image. Hence, these must be protected from bots that copy these content pieces. G-Core Labs WAF offers superior protection from attackers by analyzing traffic and preventing malicious bots from automatic copying. It also helps keep your site available all the time, even during DDoS attacks.
G-Core Labs WAF: Pricing
G-Core Labs offers a flexible and transparent pricing policy. It offers many cost benefits, Such as:
It calculates traffic based on the 95th percentile.It doesn’t charge you for 5% of the resource’s peak web trafficIt doesn’t require you to pay anything extra for traffic surges during emergencies and salesGuarantees at least 99.5% availability of resourcesYou can also configure DNS records to enable securityIf they fail at protecting you, you can ask for a refund
G-Core Labs WAF pricing is as follows:
START: $52.8/month for one protected resource, 8/5 technical support, and 3 Mbps legitimate traffic.PRO: $147.8/month for one protected resource, 24/7 technical support, and 5 Mbps legitimate traffic.ENTERPRISE: Contact their sales team for the quote.
Note: You can request WAF hacking protection as an additional plan on top of one of the above-chosen plans. It will cost $739.3 for the START and PRO plans and $1,373 for the ENTERPRISE plan. There are other plans available at higher costs.
G-Core Labs WAF: Why Should You Choose It?
Although you will find plenty of WAF providers, choosing G-Core Labs WAF comes with many benefits. There are many points that this WAF checks but not every other WAF do that. In addition, if you already use a CDN or hosting solution by G-Core Labs, you can enjoy its WAF as well to protect your systems. Here are some of the advantages of using G-Core Labs WAF.
Comprehensive Protection
Besides detecting and blocking common security attacks, G-Core Labs WAF can identify and block even low-frequency attacks. It will start its work right from the first query itself, ensuring that nothing gets overlooked. As a result, you will get superior protection for your website, API, and web applications.
Blocks Sessions
Blocking IP addresses is not that efficient, given that attackers might use plenty of IP addresses to deploy their harmful intent. There are many proxy and VPN solutions available that are difficult to track and verify whether they are genuine or not. And the attackers might be using that to trick you into believing that the request is coming from a genuine user from a permitted country or region. But if you can block sessions owing to some suspicious activity, it will be efficient and even accurate. G-Core Labs WAF does just that. Instead of blocking IP addresses, which many other WAF solutions do, G-Core Labs WAF blocks sessions immediately upon detecting something suspicious or abnormal.
Detailed Statistics
Using detailed statistics provided by the WAF, you can understand how many threats and vulnerabilities it has detected and thwarted. You will also get to know what all sites and applications are targeted the most so you can enhance their security posture.
Compliance
Data privacy has become crucial due to rampant cyberattacks. Hence, staying compliant with regulations applicable in your region or country is essential. G-Core Labs is compliant with PCI DSS. This helps you avoid penalties and remain a trustworthy figure in your industry and among customers who will trust you with their data.
Conclusion: Is G-Core Labs WAF Worth Investing In?
Using security technologies like G-Core Labs WAF is a good step towards securing your data, systems, and network. This WAF has good hardware and software configurations along with features to protect your website and applications no matter what industry you serve, from banking to ad networks, media, and online stores. Thus, investing in G-Core Cloud WAF seems to be a good deal given its impressive features and affordable pricing.
