Art of Defence Streamlines Cloud Application Security for Technology Providers
The Hyperguard SaaS solution will enable cloud technology providers to offer flexible security solutions at the Web application layer.
As cloud infrastructure, platform, and application providers race to capture market share, maintaining security for these environments and applications becomes somewhat complicated and often cumbersome. To address the issue, Regensburg, Germany-based
Art of Defence GmbH, a distributed Web application firewall (dWAF) provider, has launched the Hyperguard SaaS solution. The offering will enable cloud technology providers to offer flexible security solutions at the Web application layer. Web site operators will benefit from thorough protection without worrying about back-end integration details. Art of Defence delivers the SaaS offering through a pay-per-use license model, which is popular for cloud offering business models.
Hyperguard SaaS is built on the company’s patent-pending dWAF technology, designed for the diverse platform and infrastructure scenarios required to deliver applications through a cloud. Using the Open Web Application Security Project’s (OWASP) best practice recommendations as a starting point, Hyperguard adds proactive security features such as secure session management, URL encryption, and a Web authentication framework.
Protection levels can be tightened iteratively without risk of unwanted exposure or blocking to the application being shielded. Detection-only mode allows new rule-sets to be tested but not enforced, along with existing rule-sets that enforce proven security policies. Thus, administrators can develop, test, and deploy new security policies without relaxing established defenses or risking false positives.
Hyperguard√Ç¥s intelligent learning modes monitor site traffic and suggest new protection rules.√dž Again, administrators can test these in shadow mode to ensure no false positives occur before deploying them to enforce the improved security policies. Hyperguard also helps customers fulfill PCI DSS’s 1.2 compliance requirements for Web application security.
“The market is eager to move to the cloud even those applications considered highly sensitive. Financial services, eCommerce, healthcare–they are all pushing cloud adoption and in turn placing increasing pressure on providers to make sure the applications are secure and meet compliance requirements,” says Georg Hess, founder and CEO, Art of Defence GmbH. “Our goal is to lighten this burden from cloud providers and free them to continue to focus on developing innovative cloud applications or offer compelling platform or infrastructure services, and leave security to the experts.”
In addition to the flexible offering for cloud technology providers, the Hyperguard SaaS solution is also available to Web site operators in three tiers.
Tier One: Entry-level Offering
This level is tailored for Web hosting providers and SMBs by providing baseline protection to cover a library of common attacks with real-time updates to the library by Art of Defence. Customers can also run this offering in detection-only mode for comprehensive attack detection without the risk of any interference of their Web traffic through Hyperguard’s transparent HTTP request/response cycle inspection.√dž
Tier Two: Enterprise Offering
This offering is suited for most cloud application providers and enterprises. The full Hyperguard feature-set is available through this tier, including access to proactive security functions, filter wizards, and automatic connection to third-party solutions such as security incident and event management (SIEM) systems.
Tier Three: Total Web Application Shielding
Designed for meeting the highest security requirements, this offering includes the full Hyperguard solution plus custom set up and optimization by Art of Defence, tailored specifically for each unique use case and Web application.
In addition to the SaaS offering, Hyperguard is available as a software plug-in for typical Web infrastructure components (web and application servers, load balancers, reverse proxies, network firewalls, etc.), as a virtual appliance, or as a hardware appliance through OEM and reseller channel partners in the U.S. Hyperguard’s software architecture was designed to ensure that it can be integrated into existing security and Web infrastructures with no disruptions or interference in service.
