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Imperva Web Application Firewall vs R&S Web Application Firewall (DenyAll) comparison

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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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
R&S Web Application Firewal...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (39th)
 

Q&A Highlights

PM
Aug 31, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Abdullah Jin - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals
Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.
SS
Geo-localization and IP reputation help to keep our clients secure and more available
The area that should be improved is licensing. When using an active/passive cluster, we have to pay 70% of the master appliance and license for the passive server that does not work. Since we know that only one server works at a time, we should pay only one license for the appliances and for the support as well. In my opinion, this has to be improved. If possible, the client software should be a web application instead of downloading software for the management. This can avoid login problems when they update or patch.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The technical support is good."
"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
"Imperva is easy to use and deploy. The UI is excellent."
"One good thing about Imperva Web Application Firewall is it can be on the cloud and also it can be on-premise."
"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."
"Learning mode and custom policies are helpful features."
"It works right out of the box once you integrate the application."
"It has fewer false positives"
"The three most valuable features that I noticed are the geo-localization of the user, the IP reputation, and the compartmental analysis."
 

Cons

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"Sometimes our web application firewall will slow down."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"There could be some limitations that from the converged infrastructure perspective: when you want to converge with everything and you want Imperva to get there easily because it's not a cloud component. For example, when you want to build servers and you're using OneView to manage your software-defined networks, implementing Imperva right away is not that simple. But if you're doing just a simple cloud infrastructure with servers in there, you're good to go. Also, we are not able, with Imperva, to block by signatures. Imperva by itself needs to be complemented with another service to do URL filtering."
"The support for the on-premises version needs improvement."
"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."
"I think that better bot protection is needed in this solution."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the API integration. It was complex for us. Additionally, The onboarding could be better."
"The solution works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."
"The area that should be improved is licensing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
Information not available
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Answers from the Community

PM
Aug 31, 2021
Aug 31, 2021
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
2 out of 5 answers
RF
May 19, 2020
We have had a very good experience with FortiWeb.
JD
May 20, 2020
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Rohde & Schwarz Web Application Firewall, R&S WAF, DenyAll Web Application Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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