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F5 Shape Security vs Imperva DDoS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (6th), Bot Management (2nd)
Imperva DDoS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. F5 Shape Security is designed for Fraud Detection and Prevention and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, down 3.2% compared to last year.
Imperva DDoS, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 7.0% mindshare, down 8.1% since last year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Syed Ubaid Ali Jafri - PeerSpot reviewer
I like the content monitoring feature which I haven't seen in other WAF solutions.
They could improve by minimizing false positive results. Although this occurs less with Imperva, we would like to see some further improvements. We have been using this product for last 1 years, it's result is very impressive. But due to the excessive load on the Web site where thousands of requests‎ are generated from legitimate users, however the request in which any sequential or specialised characters are requested would be directly blocked by impreva . Currently imperva blocks the special character request generated from the user, as I conduct a test where I am parsing the encoded html values of the same special characters to the input field, imperva bypasses these encoded values for example : ' i.e. %27 or / i.e %2F, the WAF bypasses these encoded characters. I hope that this device should have a capability to detect the pattern which is associated with Xss or Xsrf, rather then by not blocking the request which contains any special characters.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The most valuable features are DDoS protection."
"The three-second service level agreement is already better than the competition."
"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."
"The setup of Imperva DDoS was easy."
"This product is a reliable defense from malicious attacks on a network environment."
"There is no need to have an appliance in house for the services because it is on the cloud."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution has a very good interface."
 

Cons

"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"The tool's price is high."
"It's quite expensive."
"I would like to have support for SSL management and secure DNS."
"Certificate management could be improved."
"We faced issues regarding compliance with client procedures. The client had strict compliance rules, and Imperva needed to be on a VM, while the client required containerization, causing a conflict. They went with Imperva for the on-premise version but shelved the cloud project due to too many blockers."
"The weakest point of Imperva is their first level of support, which should be improved. They should also improve the access and security logs viewing directly on the portal. I would like to see better access and security logs through the portal and not only through a SIM solution. Currently, if you want to explore your access and security logs from Imperva, you need a SIM tool or a SIM infrastructure on your side to do it. You can't do it manually or directly through the portal, which is a big problem for us. I had a call yesterday with Imperva for the roadmap, and I just told them this. They agreed that this is an improvement point from their side."
"Its price could be improved. It is quite expensive. It will be good if we could export the configuration. Currently, to control the configuration, we need to go to each website, which is not very convenient."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"We had an issue when securing the web applications for DDoS protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"Varies depending on the needs of the customer."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What makes automation distinct as an attack vector?
An aspect that sets automation apart as an attack vector is its ability to mimic legitimate user behavior and evade traditional security measures. Automated attacks can simulate human-like interact...
How does F5 Shape Security’s system work? What are its components?
One key component is the Shape Defense Engine. It sends telemetry to the Shape AI Cloud, a highly secure data system where machine learning algorithms analyze the data to detect patterns of automat...
Can F5 Shape Security protect both our web and mobile applications? Are there any specific features for mobile app protection?
F5 Shape Security can protect web apps as well. It’s a bit complicated, but goes something like this: The platform employs a JavaScript-based collection of client signals to gather data on user beh...
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing is rated a ten on a scale where ten is very expensive. The solution is only cloud-based and does not provide on-premises services.
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive. Additionally, support response times for emails can sometimes be delayed, which is an area that could use improvement.
 

Also Known As

Shape Security
Imperva Incapsula
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
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