Why You Should Consolidate WAF and API Protection

IT organizations increasingly employ several cybersecurity tools to protect their computing assets, especially as businesses adopt complex, multi-cloud environments. However, industry statistics suggest that the disadvantages outweigh the apparent advantages. 

How many balls can you keep in the air?

Complexity is the enemy of security. Yet, according to a Gartner report, Simplify Cybersecurity With a Platform Consolidation Framework, the average enterprise organization works with 10 to 15 security vendors and between 60 and 70 security tools. 

That’s a lot to manage, maintain, and pay for.

Even in smaller application software domains, IT organizations may use an overwhelming number of tools for different security needs. To protect its applications, organizations deploy several security modules to combat security risks, including web application firewalls (WAFs), API protection, bot management, distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, data loss prevention, and API protection.

But more absolutely is not better:

• These tools often operate in silos. That makes it harder for security professionals to get a comprehensive view of the threat landscape, which leads to inefficiencies in threat detection and incident response.
• The volume of alerts generated by multiple tools can overwhelm staff members. (So many tools, so many beeps and Slack messages!) Alert fatigue is a danger.
• It’s hard to manage permissions across multiple systems. Managing identity and access management practices across tools becomes a full-time job.

For instance, common wisdom suggests that permissions be granted on demand for a limited period or on an as-needed basis to support least privilege. Yet Microsoft's 2023 State of Cloud Permissions Risks report found that 60% of cloud identities are inactive and haven't used any of their permissions in the last 90 days. Worse, according to Microsoft’s research, over 50% of cloud identities had access to all permissions and resources.

When the ball goes splat!

That complexity may be worthwhile if it improves matters. However, using multiple tools doesn’t necessarily improve security response and may achieve the opposite effect. Organizations with 16 or more point solutions experience 2.8 times as many data security incidents as those with fewer tools, according to the Microsoft 2024 State of Multicloud Risk Report. 

This is not a new phenomenon; when the Ponemon Institute surveyed IT organizations for its 2020 Cyber Resilient Organization Study, the organizations more than 50 tools ranked themselves 8% lower in their ability to detect an attack and 7% lower in responding to an attack.

Even more critically, the cybersecurity professionals and network administrators who work for you are frustrated by the number of tools to learn and maintain. How can they report effectively with so many tools? How can they become experts in so many unrelated security applications? The tools usually aren’t integrated, which increases complexity instead of ensuring coverage across the organization. How does each tool affect the time needed for incident analysis and security system maintenance?

And naturally, the number of security tools depletes the IT budget.

There’s a better option. Consider consolidating your security tools to streamline security operations, reduce costs, and simplify management.

Impart Security’s Answer: Combine WAF Capabilities and API Security

Enterprise organizations need integrated and unified security solutions that can provide holistic protection without the drawbacks of tool sprawl and complexity.

Impart achieves this through a comprehensive platform that consolidates WAF and API security into a single solution. Organizations can replace multiple tools—including threat detection, real-time monitoring, and automated incident response—to make everything work faster, with better accuracy, and with less vexation. 

• Monitor security issues at a glance: A single dashboard provides a status overview for all security needs, offering easier management and quicker response times.
• Improve the organization’s security posture: With integrated solutions, all the components are connected. That reduces the risk of blind spots and enables consistent security policies across applications and APIs.
• Manage costs efficiently: One platform means lower licensing fees and reduced infrastructure costs.

Reducing the Noise

One Impart customer came to us because the IT team was frustrated by the difficulty of protecting its applications. While the midsized financial services company had a WAF, most of the company’s new applications used and created depended heavily on APIs. The application security reports their existing tools generated were so noisy that important information was lost. Worse, that failure to communicate left the firm’s APIs unprotected. 

By adopting Impart, the company addressed each of those problems.

• Impart has extensive data about attacks and threats, which enabled better investigations. That helped the company better protect its APIs
• The WAF usability and effectiveness were vastly improved. The customer particularly appreciated Impart Security’s rule editor, which doesn’t require special permissions or training.
• The company saved money because it needed fewer tools and management costs were reduced. All while getting better protection!

Take the Next Step

Consolidating WAF and API security with Impart Security makes sense because of the quality of the company’s services.

Impart Security has impressive expertise as a runtime protection platform that gives security teams total control over their APIs.

• The Impart API Firewall can automatically prevent malicious API behavior with enforcement operations such as rate limiting, blocking, request decoration, and redirects based upon any combination of API endpoint, parameter, or consumer behavior.
• Impart API Security detects and responds to API threats in real time. It integrates seamlessly with existing infrastructure to stop attacks and immediately patch vulnerabilities.
• Organizations can create security policies that are tailored to their needs by generating a catalog of API endpoints, hosts, and risk insights across all its environments. The catalog works natively within the Impart platform at runtime.

That’s only a brief introduction. We’d be happy to tell you more.

We hope you’ll consider Impart Security as your go-to solution for comprehensive, streamlined security.

For more information, please visit us at try.imp.art and follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated with our latest product announcements.