In today’s age of sophisticated cyberattacks and digital innovation, businesses must understand their risks and security defences. This is especially true with firewalls, since both web application and Fortinet network firewall protect businesses from various risks. To prevent online and broader network risks, you must grasp the difference between a network and an application firewall.
Security threats are always evolving, so traditional network security measures like firewalls can’t keep up. However, the advent of BYOD, public cloud, and SaaS solutions needs a web application firewall (WAF). This increases protection against web application attacks, which are stored on a remote server and accessed through a browser.
Application and Network-Level Firewalls: What’s the Difference?
A web application firewall (WAF) secures online applications by focusing on HTTP traffic. A typical firewall, on the other hand, creates a barrier between external and internal network traffic.
A web application firewall (WAF) lies between external users and web applications, analysing all HTTP traffic. Malicious requests are then detected and blocked before they reach users or web apps. WAFs protect business-critical online applications and web servers against zero-day threats and other application-layer assaults as a consequence of this. This is becoming more critical as companies invest in new digital efforts, which might expose new web apps and application programming interfaces (APIs) to attack.
To prevent assaults, a network firewall protects a protected local-area network from unwanted access. Its main goal is to distinguish a safe zone from a less secure zone and regulate communication between them. Without it, every machine with a public Internet Protocol (IP) address is vulnerable to attack from outside the network.
Network Traffic vs. Application Traffic
Unauthorized access to private networks is mitigated or prevented by traditional network firewalls. Any other access attempts are prohibited by firewall rules, which specify the traffic that is permitted into the network. Unauthorized users and attacks from individuals or devices in less secure zones are examples of network traffic that this helps to avoid.
A WAF is a firewall that focuses on application traffic. In internet-facing zones of the network, it secures HTTP and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) traffic and applications. Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and SQL injection attacks are all protected by this.
Layer 7 protection vs. Layer 3 and 4 protection
The layer of security on which application-level and network-level firewalls operate is the main technological distinction. The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) paradigm, which specifies and standardises communication functions inside telecommunication and computer systems, is responsible for these.
At the application level, WAFs defend against assaults at OSI model Layer 7. This covers Ajax, ActiveX, and JavaScript assaults, as well as cookie manipulation, SQL injection, and URL manipulation. They also go after the HTTP and HTTPS web application protocols, which are used to link web browsers and web servers.
A Layer 7 DDoS assault. For example, provides a deluge of traffic to the server layer, which generates and delivers web pages in response to HTTP requests. A WAF counteracts this by serving as a reverse proxy, shielding the targeted server from malicious traffic and filtering requests for DDoS tools.
Network firewalls secure data transmission and network traffic at Layers 3 and 4 of the OSI model. The Domain Name System (DNS) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP), as well as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Secure Shell (SSH), and Telnet, are all targets.
Unauthorized Access vs. Web Attacks
WAF solutions defend enterprises against application-targeted web-based assaults. Hackers may use web application vulnerabilities to enter the larger network if there was no application firewall in place. Online application firewalls (WAFs) protect enterprises against typical web assaults such as:
A direct denial-of-service attack is an effort to bring down a network, service, or server by flooding it with internet traffic. Its goal is to deplete the resources of its target, and it might be tough to counter since the traffic isn’t always visibly hostile.
SQL injection is a form of injection attack that allows hackers to manipulate the database server underlying a web application by executing malicious SQL queries. Bypassing website authentication and authorisation, attackers may get the content of the SQL database, then add, alter, and remove its entries. An SQL injection may be use by cyber thieves to get access to consumer information, personal data, and intellectual property. In 2017, the OWASP Top 10 ranked it as the number one threat to online application security.
Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a web security flaw that allows attackers to manipulate user interactions with apps. It allows the attacker to get around the same-origin restriction that separates websites. As a consequence, the attacker may impersonate a legitimate user and get access to data and resources that they are authorising to access.
Unauthorized access and traffic entering and exiting the network are protected by network firewalls. They defend devices and systems connected to the internet against network-wide threats. The following are some examples of common network attacks:
Unauthorized access refers to attackers who gain unauthorised access to a network. Credential theft and compromised accounts are often obtained as a consequence of individuals employing weak passwords, social engineering, and insider threats.
Attackers intercept communication between the network and other sites or inside the network itself in man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. Insecure communication protocols allow attackers to steal data as it is being send, then get user credentials and hijack user accounts.
Privilege escalation. Once an attacker has gained access to a network, they may employ privilege escalation to extend their reach even further. They may do so in two ways. By horizontally, they are acquiring access to neighbouring systems. Or by vertically, they are earning greater privileges inside the same system.
Choosing a Network Firewall or an Application Firewall
Standard network firewalls and WAFs defend against a variety of attacks, so picking the appropriate one is critical. A network firewall alone will not defend a company against web-based assaults, which can only be avoid with WAF capabilities. As a result, without an application firewall, enterprises risk exposing their whole network to web application vulnerabilities. However, since a WAF cannot guard against assaults at the network layer, it should be use in conjunction with rather than in substitute of a network firewall.
Both web-based and network-based systems defend against various sorts of traffic at different tiers. As a result, rather of competing, they are complementary. A network firewall protects a broader variety of traffic types, but a WAF addresses a particular danger that a conventional solution cannot address. It’s consequently a good idea to have both options, particularly if a company’s operating systems interact with the internet.
Rather than choosing one over the other, the difficulty is to choose the ideal WAF system for the company’s requirements. The WAF should have a hardware accelerator, monitor traffic and stop malicious attempts, be highly available, and scalable to keep up with the business’s growth.
WAF and Network Firewalls vs. Next-Generation Firewalls
Buying several firewall solutions to defend each layer of security is both costly and inconvenient. As a result, organisations are turning to complete solutions such as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs). NGFWs are systems that combine the features of network firewalls and web application firewalls into a single, centrally controlled system. They also provide security rules more context, which is critical for protecting enterprises from current security threats.
NGFWs are context-based systems that employ information like a user’s identity, time, and location to verify that they are who they claim to be. Businesses may make more educated and sensible judgments regarding user access with this additional information. Antivirus, anti-malware, intrusion prevention systems, and URL filtering are among the functions available. In light of the increasingly complex threats that firms face, this simplifies and increases the efficacy of security strategies.
It’s frequently simpler and more cost-effective to have a single, complete perspective of digital security. However, it’s critical to make sure that an NGFW covers all of the bases when it comes to network and web application security. WAFs are useful for preventing code injection, cookie signing, custom error pages, request forging, and URL encryption in online applications. As a result, using an NGFW in combination with a specialised web application firewall like FortiWeb may be essential.
Fortinet defends mission-critical online applications against attacks that exploit both known and undisclosed flaws. Our FortiWeb solution keeps up with the fast expansion of enterprises’ online applications, ensuring that they are secure whenever new features, web APIs, or updates are deploy.
FortiWeb protects against DDoS attacks, protocol validation, application attack signatures, bot mitigation, and IP reputation. Instead of the time-consuming human effort needed by traditional WAFs, it uses machine learning to construct and maintain a model of expected user behaviour.
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