Barracuda Drops Cloud-Delivered Web Application Firewall Service

Barracuda Networks now sells its web application firewall (WAF) as a cloud-delivered, managed service. The security vendor previously offered the WAF as a hardware device, a virtual appliance, or a public-cloudappliance in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Barracuda’s virtual appliance WAF is the No. 1 deployed security solution across all three public clouds, said Nitzan Miron, vice president of product management and application security services at Barracuda. The new cloud-delivered version makes it easier to deploy, but gives customers the same ability to set customized policies that they expect from on-premises WAFs, Miron added. “It’s the best of both worlds,” he said. “It’s easy to set up. In a couple minutes you get your applications secured, and you don’t have to upgrade the software or ever replace hardware. And with cloud-based WAFs, they usually have very limited ability to customize. With WAF-as-a-service, we are bringing the power of the on-premises WAF to a cloud-delivered, as-a-service WAF.” Incapsula, Akamai, and Cloudflare all offer cloud-based WAF services that compete with Barracuda’s new service. “And they all share this same kind of disadvantage,” Miron said. “They can be very easily deployed, but they give you very limited ability to customize the rules and tailor them to what you need.”