WAF and RASP Application Protection Guide

This guide discusses two critical technologies for application security: Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP). It outlines the functionalities of WAF, which serves as a network-level defense tool filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic to prevent common attacks like SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting. However, WAFs have limitations, such as vulnerability to zero-day attacks and generating false positives. In contrast, RASP operates from within the application, providing deeper security by monitoring application behavior in real-time, thus effectively blocking attacks that exploit application logic flaws. The document emphasizes the importance of combining WAF and RASP for a layered defense strategy, highlighting that while WAFs can handle known threats, RASP addresses unknown vulnerabilities, thereby minimizing the attack surface. It also presents examples of how RASP can mitigate specific threats, such as deserialization attacks and the Log4Shell vulnerability, showcasing its advantages over WAFs in real-world scenarios.