
Think of an NGFW as the entrance to a hotel and the WAF as the key to a hotel room. Both NGFWs and WAFs are considered network functions, but they interact with traffic at different points. Given the various potential points for intrusion across both a network and a web app, in most cases it’s important to employ both technologies. Let’s take a look at what each system does and how they work-independently and together-to help you. We see some decisionmakers weighing a perceived choice between next generation firewalls (NGFWs) and web application firewalls (WAFs). These gaps make it more challenging to implement and coordinate necessary security measures-leaving a patchwork of defenses ripe for exploitation. As well, there’s often a lack of meaningful collaboration between web app developers and IT in tracking down vulnerabilities. That means many organizations are left without a centralized security expert who makes decisions. To complicate matters, according to 451 Research, only 53% of organizations have security leadership in place. Given the proliferation of app development tools, requirements to function on demand and at scale, and the need to protect the data that passes through apps, it can be confusing what tool, in which piece of the security setup, is ideal to keep an app secure. Keeping web apps secure isn’t a clear-cut endeavor.

The 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations report found that 43% of breaches involved web apps, and that many hacking instances exploited web app vulnerabilities. As hackers find more opportunities to infiltrate web-based applications, organizations struggle to keep ahead of them.
