Post-Pandemic world, Shut-downs, and Web Security Connections

by johnoh on February 4, 2021

As the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic approaches, we, here in Silicon Valley, have great hope for 2021. As the vaccine distribution continues to trickle to Main Street, Californians have recently exited a stay-at-home mandate that has nearly shut-down the state since December 2020. We have a new year along with new practices in this post-pandemic world. For enterprises, digital transformation projects have accelerated to meet new demands for Work-from-Home including online collaboration of events, meetings, and training. The online experience has rewarded new innovators and easy-to-use digital services like Zoom and Peloton which are no longer flash mob activities but actual day-to-day essentials. This list of innovative online services will continue to grow as we accommodate the new demands of this post-pandemic world.

Moving into the life of the pandemic-fighting world, innovative enterprises and their IT teams are juggling resources and redefining processes working across all business lines. Today’s online digital business is now the lifeline of any company. According to eMarketer data, e-commerce sales in 2020 were expected to grow 32.4% YoY, while brick-and-mortar is expected to decline by 3.2%¹. As modern digital transactions grow, so have the demands for new practices, from contactless pickups to touchless transactions. Per eMarketer’s June 2020 data, 30% of consumers indicated interest in mobile payments, up from 17% just three months before. Interest for orders on mobile platforms has grown from 16% to 28%². Furthermore, Imperva’s recent cyber-defense report reveals there was growth in web traffic in the following industries: Food (+60%), Entertainment (+43%), Retail (+20%), Business (+18%), and Computing & IT (+12%)³.

As enterprises have refocused on online and digital experiences, other challenges have evolved. According to Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigations Report⁴, web application servers were targeted in around 40% of breaches last year. Aside from the high cost of stolen customer data, businesses should avoid future shutdowns as a result of breaches caused by incidents like DDOS attacks. To minimize such threats, enterprises have looked at modern web application firewalls. Recognized as a category leader by Gartner for the past seven consecutive years⁵, we’d like to share with you the following quick checklist to help increase your company’s security in 2021:

Simplicity and breath of deployment: Whether your applications sit in the datacenter, cloud, or both, even across multi-clouds, Imperva offers you the breadth of choice on how to deploy your web application firewall. The easiest is our Cloud WAF – click here to begin a free trial.
Threat Accuracy: How would you like out-of-the box automated protection from day one? Based on a network of secure reverse proxies, Imperva Cloud WAF inspects every request at three levels: connection level, request format/structure level, and the content level. Along with its Attack Analytics, via artificial intelligence (AI), the Imperva Cloud WAF distills thousands of Cloud WAF events into distinct narratives, significantly improving security operations center (SOC) efficiency and reducing risk. The Imperva Cloud WAF is part of an integrated defense in-depth suite of application security and delivery services. This suite includes CDN, DDoS Protection, Advanced Bot Protection, and Load Balancing and has the flexibility to integrate with leading SIEMs to identify threat anomalies. Most importantly, the Imperva Research Labs Team actively discovers emerging threats to provide the up-to-date security protection needed in today’s fast-changing attack landscape. Security experts monitor external sources like new vulnerability disclosures and help you reduce the risk of third-party code. The team analyzes all traffic going through Imperva via crowdsourced intelligence, automatically vetting then propagating new mitigation rules to all our customers. New security signatures that defend against recently discovered threats are added daily.
Ease of Management: Previously, we highlighted the benefits of ‘out of the box’ protection and how Imperva Cloud WAF is a key component of the Imperva Application Security stack. Analysts and customers report on its ease of use, rate the UI highly and are pleased the product is intuitive and effective. Forrester advises: “Customers seeking a full application security stack and a modern user experience would benefit from Imperva’s Cloud WAF solution⁶.”

Start your Application Security Free Trial today to protect your web applications and data, or any possible digital shut-downs.

¹https://www.emarketer.com/content/haves-have-nots-divides-deepen-across-retail-amid-pandemic?ecid=NL1014
²https://www.emarketer.com/content/frictionless-stores-of-future-will-land-expand?ecid=NL1014
³https://www.imperva.com/cyber-threat-index/
⁴https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/dbir/2020/summary-of-findings/
⁵https://www.imperva.com/blog/imperva-a-seven-time-magic-quadrant-leader-and-named-highest-for-completeness-of-vision-for-waf/
⁶https://www.imperva.com/blog/forresterwave/