Vercel introduces the Vercel Web Application Firewall (WAF). This new development provides more visibility and control for users, adding an extra layer of protection from a far larger set of web threats than before—keeping web experiences secure, scalable, and fast.
The Vercel Firewall platform blocks around 1 billion suspicious TCP connections weekly, peaking at 7 billion malicious requests on certain days. The platform has been effective against DDoS and Layer 3 attacks, but it has worked in a relatively blind mode.
 What does Vercel WAF Offer?
The Vercel-native Web Application Firewall brings first-party security to the edge, ensuring low latency and limiting access to applications only for legitimate users. It is already integrated into the Vercel ecosystem and automatically deployed without any additional routing rules, external tools, or complicated integrations.
All plans get granular Layer 7 control over application entry points to block unwanted traffic. It is supplemented by the new Attack Challenge Mode and the existing real-time DDoS mitigation from the platform-wide firewall.
Advanced Features for Robust Protection
The Vercel WAF offers comprehensive protection for applications with a powerful set of features:
Customizable Rules Engine: This engine allows the definition of granular rules based on path, user agent, IP address, geolocation, JA4 fingerprints, and target paths. This enables control over traffic handling, such as blocking traffic from specific countries, restricting access to certain paths based on user roles, or allowing connections only from known browsers.
Framework-Aware Rules: Facilitates rule definition based on framework routes, eliminating the need for regular expressions or prefixes.
Managed Rulesets: Available for enterprise customers, these rulesets target specific use cases, including prevention against OWASP Top 10 risks.
Observability: Provides insights into key security metrics for streamlined management. Users can monitor threats and connections managed by the WAF and the platform-wide firewall in real time, ensuring comprehensive protection and operational transparency.
Rate Limiting (Beta): Enforces frequency limitations on user access attempts, ensuring resource access as intended.
Instant Propagation: Reflects firewall changes globally within 300 milliseconds.
Instant Rollback: Allows immediate reversion to previous ruleset configurations to correct unintended rule creation.
Conclusion
Vercel emphasizes security as a foundational pillar, ensuring teams can focus on rapid iteration while maintaining robust protection. The company’s vision is to empower a web that is secure by default, achieved through continuous investment in new and existing security solutions.
FAQs
1. What are Web application firewalls?
Web application firewall (WAF) helps protect web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between them and the Internet. It protects web applications from attacks such as forgery, cross-site scripting (XSS), file inclusion, and SQL injection.
2. What are the types of WAF?Â
- Network-based WAF
- Host-based WAF
- Cloud-based WAF
3. Top Web application firewall providersÂ
- Cloudflare
- F5
- Vercel
- AWS
- Akamai
4. How does Vercel prioritize security in its approach?
Security is a foundational pillar for Vercel, allowing teams to focus on rapid iteration while ensuring robust protection. The company’s vision is to empower a web that is secure by default, achieved through continuous investment in new and existing security solutions.
5. What is the significance of DDoS mitigation in cybersecurity?
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) mitigation is crucial as it protects against attacks that aim to overwhelm a server or network with excessive traffic, causing service outages. Effective DDoS mitigation ensures the availability and reliability of online services.
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