Managing the protection of web applications

Web applications are now the backbone of many organizations. They have a huge impact on the image and are very often the backbone of a business. Because of their design, they are very vulnerable to all kinds of attacks:

  • They must be publicly accessible from the Internet,
  • They must have access to data, very often critical enterprise databases,
  • They are often based on off-the-shelf solutions that have numerous vulnerabilities,
  • Vulnerability remediation is usually time-consuming, and the applications must maintain business continuity.

FortiWeb – a security system designed to protect web applications

FortiWeb is an advanced solution, dedicated to protecting Web applications, of the Web Application Firewall (WAF) type.
It has integrated security modules, allowing it to protect Web applications against both known and emerging threats. FortiWeb leverages Fortinet’s cloud capabilities (FortiGuard) and advanced technologies, such as Machine Learning, and dedicated signatures, allowing it to protect Web applications against both known and emerging threats (Zero-Day).

FortiWeb:

  • Monitors and filters all HTTP traffic taking place between the client and the server,
  • Detects anomalous requests and validates HTTP requests,
  • Assists the application in maintaining high availability,
  • Filters out malicious traffic,
  • Identifies and blocks threats to web applications.

How does FortiWeb work? The system analyzes client requests, distinguishing “proper and safe” ones
from “malicious requests.” Then, depending on the mode of operation and type of threat, it takes preventive actions (e.g., no forwarding of malicious traffic to back-end servers, attempting to reset the connection).

The solution comes in several models – choosing the right one depends on the infrastructure to be protected. The most commonly used options are:

  • Physical appliance,
  • Virtual machine,
  • FortiWeb as a service – SaaS,
  • Application protection edition for Docker and ECS (Amazon Elastic Container Service) based platforms.

With FortiWeb, we can protect, among other things:

  • Information websites,
  • Online stores,
  • Applications that process data via APIs,
  • Any service accessible via HTTP/HTTPS is a valuable resource for us.