What is the benefit of using AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF)?

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) is designed to protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. The primary benefit of AWS WAF is its ability to filter web traffic based on specific conditions you define.

By utilizing AWS WAF, you can set rules to allow or block web requests based on various criteria, such as the IP addresses that are allowed or blocked, the values of query strings, request headers, or the body of requests. This allows for a highly customizable security posture that can be tailored to meet your application's needs and to respond quickly to particular threats or malicious activities, thereby enhancing the overall security of web applications.

The ability to filter web traffic not only protects against attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting but also helps ensure that only legitimate traffic reaches your applications, which can improve performance and reduce load on your back-end resources. This level of control over web traffic is crucial for maintaining the integrity and security of web applications in today’s increasingly complex threat landscape.