Barracuda Networks announced significant new capabilities for its Cloud Application Protection platform to deliver an additional level of protection and make it even easier for organizations to secure their applications in a digitally transformed world. These new services and features include client-side protection, the ability to deploy containerized WAF nodes, and an auto-configuration engine. In addition, Cloud Application Protection now leverages machine learning, vulnerability scanning and remediation, and Advanced Threat Protection to provide active threat intelligence for more powerful protection.
Cloud Application Protection is Barracuda’s platform for Web Application and API Protection (WAAP). According to Gartner: “By 2023, more than 30% of public-facing web applications and APIs will be protected by cloud web application and API protection (WAAP) services, which combine distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, bot mitigation, API protection and web application firewalls (WAFs). This is an increase from fewer than 15% today.” 1
“At Barracuda, we strive to continually make security easier for our customers, and Cloud Application Protection 2.0 provides enterprise-level application security with consumer-level ease of use,” said Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security at Barracuda. “The powerful new capabilities we’re introducing address the application security issues organizations are most concerned about right now and also provide protection for where applications are headed next.”
Barracuda recently surveyed hundreds of IT security decision makers from organizations around the world, and the top five application security challenges they pointed to were bots, supply chain attacks, vulnerability detection, API security, and security slowing down app developments.
Highlights of Cloud Application Protection 2.0 include:
- Client-Side Protection — This new feature automatically creates and deploys protections against website skimming and supply chain attacks such as MageCart. These types of attacks are performed by infecting a script that is loaded directly by the browser, meaning that WAFs are unable to detect them. Cloud Application Protection 2.0 adds both protection and reporting capabilities against these attacks.
- Containerized WAF deployment — This new deployment option brings the same security engine as Barracuda WAF and WAF-as-a-Service, but in a container form. As more applications are now deployed in containers, they can now be protected.
- Auto-Configuration Engine — The Auto-Configuration Engine uses machine learning models to check an organization’s traffic patterns and provide recommendations to tighten security settings, reducing administrative overhead.
- Active Threat Intelligence — This cloud-based machine learning-enhanced service provides near real-time active threat intelligence to detect and stop new threats as they occur. Barracuda Active Threat Intelligence brings together the Barracuda Vulnerability Manager, Barracuda Vulnerability Remediation Service, Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection, and Barracuda Advanced Bot Protection’s cloud layer, making it a single service that covers the full range from detection to remediation.
In addition to these features, Cloud Application Protection 2.0 adds an Azure Sentinel integration that allows defenders to quickly see the most important information in the specific context, allowing for rapid responses. Customers can also choose to create rules on Azure Sentinel to perform configuration tasks using the WAF API to close the feedback loop when newer attacks are detected.
A workbook that sets up an Azure Sentinel workspace with a dashboard specific to Barracuda WAF or WAF-as-a-Service is now available in the Azure portal, making it easy for administrators to deploy this integration.
“Barracuda Cloud Application Protection brings together all the features and performance we need with the ease of use that we want,” said Zach Peer, director of technology and managed hosting at One North. “As longtime customers, we are confident that the solution is providing the best protection possible against all the latest threats.”
“Bots and supply chain attacks are becoming major concerns for us, so we’re excited to see Barracuda introduce a range of new protections that will help us fight the latest threats,” said David Gooding, Head of Strategy and Digital Operations at KOIOS DatalytiX. “It provides us peace of mind, and the auto-configuration engine makes it easier to stay ahead of latest tricks from cybercriminals and further protects our customers and their data.”
