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Manager - IT Security at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Reseller
Stops web attacks from denying services and endangering the security of sensitive data
Pros and Cons
  • "It is an effective threat mitigation tool."
  • "The technical support is excellent."
  • "Imperva should have more points of presence in Africa."

What is our primary use case?

Incapsula was acquired by Imperva. We had a need to provide a solution for our clients and the Incapsula solution and Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall) allowed us to have people subscribe to Incapsula as a service. It was easy to work with because we would just put in the hostname and the IP address of the websites in Incapsula's DNS. When the DNS is resolved it first passes through Incapsula and makes a stops in the Cloud WAF before it sends the website itself.  

Customers can trust it because the traffic going to the customer passes through Incapsula's cloud service. So if there is an attack, the website and the visitors are protected because it will take care of such issues and it eliminates the bad traffic. Both ends are taken care of so the website is protected from hackers because it first goes through the Incapsula Cloud WAF. That is the basic high-level architecture of how the Incapsula works.  

We distributors of Imperva in Africa. I am responsible for our business presence in Eastern and Western Africa. I am fixed locally here in Nigeria. Being distributors, we have a pretty good idea of how the market is in general and how the products are used. All the partners who implement it and who resell sell it, buy it from us and deploy for customer accounts. We cover a high percentage of the financial service industry here in Nigeria.  

What is most valuable?

For this part of the world, several things are important. It is important that the clients have the features which they get to use to get against bad traffic, of course as this is the reason for the product. But especially for customers in this region, it is also the opportunity to use the service platform. They do not have to own it or maintain it and they may not otherwise have the capacity to deploy this type of solution. Instead, they can pay for it as a service. It works so well here that even some of the banks are using it.  

The most valuable feature is the ability to mitigate bad traffic. I think the highest traffic we would experience can be handled by the Incapsula Cloud WAF because it can scale. So if there is some attack on a website and there is high volume, instead of it disrupting the website and disrupting business operations, it is not a problem for the customer's website. That ability to mitigate problems with the traffic is why the clients use the product to protect their valuable data and customer interactions.  

What needs improvement?

If I had the opportunity to recommend an enhancement to Imperva it would be to have more POP (Point of Presence) in East and West Africa, and in Central Africa as well. There is only one POP in South Africa. There are other ones are in Europe, America, and Asia and sometimes the latency can be an issue because for your traffic to hit the website — say in East Africa. First, it has to first go to the nearest point of presence. Because of the distance, there can be some problems. So if they have a POP closer to manage customers around Africa this could be a better service to clients.  

For how long have I used the solution?

I have only recently begun to use Imperva Incapsula compared to the amount of time I have been in the industry. For more than a decade and I have tried my hands on various security solutions, mainly having to do with network infrastructure.  But now I am back to working with security solutions and, over this past year, I have engaged mostly with applications in data security. Before that, I was doing a lot more with the whole of network security. Incapsula is more of an application for data security and it is something which Imperva does pretty well.  

Buyer's Guide
Imperva DDoS
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Imperva DDoS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is not an issue. The product is serviced and maintained for the client.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Virtually all the banks in Nigeria, Ghana, East, and West Africa, are using Imperva. Of course, they are using it for various things, but for the most part, they use it for data security and application security and then also a little bit on the Incapsula platform.  

The scalability depends on the customer but there are really no features that a client will want to request that Imperva does not handle in terms of scalability. Of course, you cannot compare the size of the banks and the input and output demands of banking in Western European countries or the Americas with the needs of banking in Africa.  

For us, it is a good solution.  

How are customer service and support?

Response from technical support has been very good. I would say that they are excellent because they are always willing to attend to customers' requests. They provide support based on time zones so there is good access.  

How was the initial setup?

Because it is a cloud product and the setup is minimal, it is straightforward and quickly implemented.  

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I do have experience with Imperva SecureSphere. I am working with various solutions that have various features and how these solutions work for different customers. For one customer, I was trying to do some research to see if they should replace Trustwave WAF with a different solution because the customer asked me about other possibilities. This was my first customer who had asked me to look into Trustwave, so I also took the time to research that product. But different products fit different businesses and industries better.  

What other advice do I have?

I am not an expert in every solution of this type, but I have a pretty good idea of what makes them work as a good solution based on customer needs. I do not do the implementation because I am more in a position of doing pre-sales and consultancy.  

I would highly recommend Imperva Incapsula especially for customers who want extra security for their web presence.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the Incapsula product overall as a nine-out-of-ten.  

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Distributor
PeerSpot user
Sales Executive at EVVO LABS
Real User
Protects against broken authentication
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "Imperva always needs to adjust to new versions of cyber attacks, it needs to be faster, improve the resiliency of the software of the solution."

What is our primary use case?

Previously I was in software development for more than 15 years. I had developed web applications for internet and cable TV companies. Now, I am a sales executive for Imperva Cloud WAF. 

Imperva Cloud WAF, previously Imperva Incapsula, is a web application firewall that is implemented in the cloud. It protects a public facing web application. It will track if a hacker is doing brute force attack. The web application firewall will detect it and block the source. This could be an IP address or the main name specific for a country. You can then update the profile of your server to block those IP addresses where the attack is coming from .

We have placed Imperva Cloud in our client's employee self service system that they are logged into. The website is protected by Imperva so that employees and customers can log in all over the Philippines. The client is a power generation company, which is a critical service, and has branches all over the Philippines.

We partner with a couple of on-premise data centers in the Philippines, one is PIM. They also provide cloud solutions. We bundle our solutions into their cloud projects.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

Imperva always needs to adjust to new versions of cyber attacks, it needs to be faster, improve the resiliency of the software of the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Imperva Cloud WAF for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Imperva is stable. Based on Gartner's survey we are top three, meaning we are reliable based on customer feedback.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution. We have data centers all over the world. The solution can be set up to be optimized wherever the clients are accessing.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has good response time. I am also the liaison officer for the technical team in Singapore. Support responds quickly and they do attend to the issues that we raise to them.

How was the initial setup?

The implementation of Imperva Cloud WAF is easy. All you need to do is change the DNS settings, because it is a cloud solution there is no appliance that you need to install at the data center. It just changes the DNS settings, and then a couple of IP address and domain name settings to allow a couple of those IP addresses and domain names settings into the firewall of the client and the firewall of Imperva.

The actual installation will only take a few hours and then full implementation within 24 hours. The initial setup takes time because of the configuration on the client-side. We prepared a questionnaire for the client to assist with preparation.

What was our ROI?

We created a cross-comparison against hiring a team of cybersecurity staff versus getting a subscription. After using Imperva Cloud for the past three years the cost is already acceptable against hiring a team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price depends on the client's needs, it will be impacted depending on whether they need diverse production, or account take over for example.

There is an initial four package bundle with the price changing monthly.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Imperva DDoS
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Imperva DDoS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user817755 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Gives us visibility into DDoS, SQL Injection and other types attacks
Pros and Cons
  • "Provides Anti-DDoS protection, as well as other protections like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and antiscanner. These types of protection are valuable to the business due to the daily attacks on our portals, and that often cannot be seen without a tool like this."
  • "Setup was straightforward, very simple. I only entered the domain and Incapsula returned the DNS data that I needed to change for the protection to be configured."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

The first use case was due to the need to protect DDoS attacks as well as protection for SQL injection. The existing application was no longer supported, and to prevent further attacks from occurring, WAF Imperva was applied. The rollout was very fast due to the need for DNS notes only.

How has it helped my organization?

In the old days, we experienced many problems with denial of service attacks, and identifying them was very difficult because we did not have a WAF solution. After the deployment, the solution gave us the visibility we needed.

What is most valuable?

Anti-DDoS protection, as well as other protections like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and antiscanner. These types of protection are valuable to the business due to the daily attacks on our portals, and that often cannot be seen without a tool like this.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Very good, although I have not had any problems so far.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, this is the first solution I have used.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward, very simple. I only entered the domain and Incapsula returned the DNS data that I needed to change for the protection to be configured.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not participate in the process of choosing the solution.

What other advice do I have?

Only configure it by enabling all protections. This is very important for preventing attacks.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1581819 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Features that outperform it's competitors, easy to scale, reliable, and responsive support
Pros and Cons
  • "It's very pretty easy to onboard the URL."
  • "It would be beneficial to include vulnerability management in the solution, similar to what they have for their on-premise solution."

What is our primary use case?

We offer implementation services for our customers.

Most customers use Imperva Incapsula to protect themselves from WAF attacks. If they need an application load balancing, whether it is on a single data center or if they have a B2B extension. Also, if they need protection from the bots. Imperva has all of those functionalities.

What is most valuable?

It's very pretty easy to onboard the URL. One of the unique features included with Imperva is its advanced bot protection. In addition the base licensing modules with most of the features.

In terms of features, Imperva is quite good; it outperforms its competitors.

What needs improvement?

Pricing could be more competitive.

It would be beneficial to include vulnerability management in the solution, similar to what they have for their on-premise solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Imperva Incapsula for more than three years.

I have been using the latest update.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is quite good. It has an uptime of 99%. None of our customers have complained about its uptime and its availability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The majority of our customers are enterprise businesses, with some SMB, but it depends on their budget, as well as their needs, and whether it is for security or compliance purposes.

Imperva is quite expensive for organizations that use it for compliance purposes. Other WAP solutions, such as Fortinet or Barracuda, which are slightly less expensive than Imperva, will be considered.

Imperva Incapsula is easy to scale.

How are customer service and support?

I believe that Technical support is 24/7. They are also very quick to respond via email.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We work with all of the Imperva solutions from the database, monitoring tools, and the web applications firewall.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup Is quite simple and straightforward. We only have seven steps to follow. It's a very simple and straightforward process.

If the customer agrees to a DNS sense, it will take no more than 10 to 15 minutes.

Imperva is responsible for maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Incapsula is a SaaS (software-as-a-service) provider. Anyone can do the applications, but you must subscribe to the service.

Pricing is a challenge for most of our customers.

What other advice do I have?

I cannot provide a comparison because I have not worked with any other vendors.

I would recommend this solution to others because it is pretty simple to implement, and you don't need a dedicated WAP technician to maintain this solution. 

Anyone in the organization can easily implement it, and it can be maintained with a little application knowledge. On the application side, you do not need to be a subject matter expert it is not necessary.

I would rate Imperva Incapsula a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
it_user507306 - PeerSpot reviewer
Digital Solutions Architect | Development Manager | Technical Business Analyst at Corporate SEO
Vendor
Installation requires just a CNAME entry, avoiding the risk of email downtime.

What is most valuable?

  • Faultless inlining & minification: Every competing product breaks the layout, but we are yet to see Incapsula break a site
  • Installation requires just a CNAME entry, avoiding the risk of email downtime.
  • Instant PCI compliance and protection from the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities.
  • CDN & DDoS protection.

How has it helped my organization?

Incapsula delivers a massive improvement to website performance and security in less than 20 minutes, regardless of the CMS. We love it so much that we decided to create a new service around this product, which could result in our largest income stream yet.

What needs improvement?

They once terminated a free account without warning, resulting in a few days downtime. But you get what you pay for.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is first class. These guys are sharp.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We moved from CloudFlare because Incapsula’s minification was faultless, and their CNAME installation procedure avoided downtime for other services such as email.

How was the initial setup?

It was very easy to set up: 20 minutes and you're done.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Go for the $59/month Pro plan. Free accounts can get terminated, and the higher plans are only if you like to have your own SSL certificate, or get regular DDoS attacks. The Pro plan has everything you need; it's just that you're using Imperva's SSL certificate, not yours.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, we evaluate other options in great detail. We looked at CloudFlare, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, Wordfence, BulletProof Security, Varnish, Mod_Security, ConfigServer, and a variety of other options. Incapsula isn't the cheapest, but is way in front of the competition. You'll easily spend double/triple the cost of your Incapsula subscription on maintaining any other solution, whereas Incapsula handles all that overhead for you, right out of the box.

What other advice do I have?

Don't wait till you've been hacked; get protected now. It'll cost you at least a year of Incapsula fees to recover from website hacking. And if your website is running slow, Google is probably already penalising your site, when the fix is so easy. Incapsula is by far the fastest fix for both website speed and security.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user507306 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user507306Digital Solutions Architect | Development Manager | Technical Business Analyst at Corporate SEO
Vendor

See the "valuable features" section above.

See all 2 comments
it_user300492 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Engineer/Major Accounts with 51-200 employees
Real User
With increasing traffic to our sites, it has protected them from DDoS attacks against which we did not previously have a solution.

What is most valuable?

  • CDN
  • DDoS protection

How has it helped my organization?

Basically, before we found Incapsula, we were getting hit with 5-10 gigabit DDoS attacks, and we were trying to figure out how to fight the attacks. Therefore, we tried Incapsula out on one site, and through the trial we saw what the solution could do – the attacker gave up after a few tries. Once we signed up for an enterprise account with all ten sites we saw the attacks drop weekly.

What needs improvement?

It would be nice to get a feed from Incapsula to import into our system. We have to have multiple dashboards open at the same time, and it would be nice to have one single dashboard with all our information.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for eight months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues – it has been particularly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability has been pretty good, our European traffic has doubled and our sales have gone up along with our stability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10/10

Technical Support:

10/10 – within 5 minutes we have had a response.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used a NetScaler mitigation appliance – nothing worked that well, we were getting attacks and they were taking down services.

How was the initial setup?

Setup was fairly straightforward. It took about 10 minutes as I had to fine tune it with our API to mitigate what traffic was being blocked. I was able to determine that pretty quickly and adjust accordingly.

What about the implementation team?

We did it in-house.

What was our ROI?

Probably about $150,00-$190,000 savings. It's hard to predict, but that would be my ROI estimate.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It costs around $7/month, really cheap.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at CloudFlare. We tried it but it didn’t work that well.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you use a premium DNS provider. We had to move from a basic DNS provider to a more complex one to get it work with Incapsula 100%.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user298446 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP R&D with 51-200 employees
Vendor
They don't require us to move our DNS service to them like other services do, allowing us to maintain our network in our current configuration.

Valuable Features

The features that are most valuable are the protection against denial-of-service attacks and all kinds of other internet attacks. The presence of Incapsula helps us answer the compliance requirements for IT security, as our clients require IT security compliance, and it's very important to our enterprise customers that we comply with the requirements.

Improvements to My Organization

Another important feature is that it doesn’t require us to move our DNS service to Incapsula like other services. It allows us to maintain our network in our current configuration. It works well with the Amazon cloud we use and doesn’t require us to re-configure our network.

Room for Improvement

Its user interface could be improved, as the competition looks better, but it doesn’t really need improvements in its functionality. We would like to have more reports and real-time views. Basically, the core functionality is great.

Use of Solution

We have been using the solution for six months.

Deployment Issues

No issues encountered.

Stability Issues

As far as I can see it's got great stability.

Scalability Issues

No issues with the scalability.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

8/10 – they were responsive.

Technical Support:

8/10

Initial Setup

It doesn’t require any changes in code, so it's very easy to implement.

Implementation Team

We implemented it by ourselves, and it took an hour, and was very easy.

ROI

It's very difficult in security products to evaluate the ROI, but we definitely feel it has helped us with compliance – we get projects and customers we wouldn’t get if we didn’t have Incapsula. It's not something you can measure – we have no other option but to use the solution, it’s a necessity.

Other Solutions Considered

We tried the competition, Cloudflare, we even used them, but Incapsula is more suitable to use for web/mobile applications, and that is how we use it.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Director at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees
Vendor
It provides intelligence on bad IPS and malicious software, and scales without issue.

What is most valuable?

  • Human contact
  • Fast SLA
  • Trustworthy and excellent communication

Highly-functional back office with user friendly reports and intelligence on bad IPS and malicious software is at very high level and very quick. Part of the solutions function is that they have to stay on top of the data intelligence game. They have the first knowledge of break points.

How has it helped my organization?

The product makes information readily available and mitigates any problems quickly.

What needs improvement?

With the way that protection works, there is no such thing as pure protection, but as soon as Incapsula knows what a problem looks like, they fix it. They have to stay on top of the data intelligence game.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for three years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

It's usually fast but it can take two to three days on a big operation to get it live, especially if there is tracking.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No problem with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Communication declined a bit as they got bigger – 7/10. Service is really good though.

Technical Support:

8/10. Service is good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We went through at least a quarter million dollars in DDoS firewalls before we got to them. We tried solutions worldwide.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For enterprise level stuff pricing is very competitive. Very good corporate deals.

What other advice do I have?

Go for it if you’re looking into it – they are a good solution and are trustworthy people. Just really works.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Imperva DDoS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Imperva DDoS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.