Leading Industry Analysts Predict Greater Web Application Firewall Adoption

April 17, 2007; 09:05 AM
NetContinuum, the leader in Application Security and Application Delivery, today announced that its product line has been recognized as a leader in the Web Application Firewall market in recent reports from Enterprise Management Associates and Forrester Research.

Businesses are quickly adopting portal and service-oriented technologies that expose mission critical applications over the web. At the same time, attackers are moving up the stack, with application layer and session layer attacks increasing in frequency and destructiveness. Among those most at risk are companies storing
and processing credit card payments -- including retail, healthcare, media, and utilities companies. These companies will face mandatory compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard version 1.1 in mid-2008. The PCI regulation recommends using web application firewalls or performing customer application code reviews to improve data security.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) weighs in on the advantages of using web application firewalls as part of a comprehensive PCI strategy in their March 2007 report titled, The Rise of Application Security. The EMA report takes a comprehensive look at the entire application security lifecycle, from secure coding to penetration testing to secure production deployment. According to EMA, web application firewalls have emerged as a best practice for secure deployment. The report states that application firewall technology has improved tremendously over the last few years, and with mandates such as the PCI DSS requiring its use, companies will increasingly adopt it.

"Application firewalls provide real-time protection, not only from known vulnerabilities prior to the application of vendor-supplied updates and patches, but also to defend against unknown gaps in secure development. They have therefore become an integral component of a defense in depth strategy. In fact, although custom code security reviews are also highly recommended, it takes time to remediate the code. Meanwhile, the applications remain exposed. Therefore EMA recommends that enterprises employ both strategies together for an optimized lifecyle security approach -- ultimately looping both phases together to provide designers and developers valuable information on secure coding practices as new attack techniques are discovered. In addition, web application firewalls like those from NetContinuum provide increased value in the operations center by offering critical application delivery functions such as load balancing, acceleration, and access control in the same appliance," said Scott Crawford, senior security analyst for EMA.

Adds Crawford, "NetContinuum was one of the first in the industry to define and implement a comprehensive and integrated application delivery controller appliance for the DMZ, and continues to show leadership with its breadth of security features, real-world performance and ease of use."

According to Forrester's Web Application Firewall Forecast published in March 2007, "Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) -- an emerging technology that blocks attacks on Web applications -- have been thrust into the spotlight by PCI Data Security Standard requirements. Their sales have more than doubled during the last two years, and Forrester expects that pace of growth to continue through 2008 with market revenue topping out at $184 million in 2009."(1) Forrester Research recently named NetContinuum "the Leader" in The Forrester Wave: Web Application Firewalls, Q2 2006 (June 2006). "With the best overall policy configuration and product management, the highest-scoring performance and acceleration features, and the most complete logging, reporting, and bidirectional security features, NetContinuum should be on every purchaser's shortlist."

"NetContinuum is committed to continuing to deliver application deployment solutions that improve the security, performance and availability of web 1.0, web 2.0 and web services applications," said Varun Nagaraj, CEO of NetContinuum.

About NetContinuum

NetContinuum application controllers efficiently deploy, secure and manage enterprise web applications. NetContinuum Application Gateways enable rapid, secure deployment of new enterprise applications. Our Web Application Firewalls enable data center teams to immediately secure existing enterprise applications. NetContinuum was the first in the industry to define and implement a comprehensive and integrated controller appliance, and continues to lead the industry with its breadth of security features, real-world performance and ease of use. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.