Security Application Manager

A Security Application Manager configuration:

• Identifies the set of traffic to which it applies by hostname, a URL path, or both.

• Defines how threats will be detected via:

  • Access Rules: An access rule identifies legitimate traffic and threats through access control lists.
  • Rate Rules: A rate rule defines the rate of traffic that may be directed to one or more web sites.
  • Bot Manager Standard: A bot rule identifies traffic generated by basic bots by requiring clients to solve a browser challenge before serving content.
  • Bot Manager Advanced: Automatically detects good bots and bots that are spoofing good bots. Additionally, you may define a custom traffic profile through which bots will be identified and mitigated (e.g., block, redirect, or browser challenge).

  • Custom Rules: A custom rule identifies threats using custom criteria that takes into account your site's traffic profile to avoid false positives.

    The Custom rules capability requires WAF Premier or WAF Standard. If you currently have WAF Essentials or WAF Insights and would like to use custom rules, please contact your CDN account manager to upgrade to the full version.

  • Managed Rules: A managed rule identifies threats through threat detection policies.

• Identifies how the above rules are enforced on rate limited requests or threats .

  Each detected threat is logged regardless of enforcement action (i.e., block, custom response, redirect, or alert). View logged threats from the Threats, Rates, or Rate Enforcement dashboards.

  Standard security practices dictate that measures should be taken to prevent sensitive data (e.g., credit card information or passwords) from being passed as clear text from the client to your origin server. Another incentive for encrypting sensitive data is that it will be logged by our system when an alert is triggered as a result of this data. If sensitive data cannot be encrypted or obfuscated, then it is strongly recommended to contact our technical customer support to disable logging for the Matched Value field.

• Allows you to keep your applications secure with known configurations and audit new access rules, custom rules, and managed rules without impacting production traffic. Use the Threats dashboard to isolate and analyze threats detected as a result of an audit of new access rules, custom rules, and managed rules.

  The ability to secure and audit your production traffic using separate configurations requires WAF Premier, WAF Standard, or WAF Essentials. If you currently have WAF Insights and would like to use this capability, please contact your CDN account manager to upgrade to the full version.

Traffic Identification

Identify the set of traffic to which a Security Application Manager configuration's rules will be applied by host, URL path, or both.

Host

By default, a Security Application Manager configuration applies to all hosts. However, you may limit a Security Application Manager configuration to one or more hosts. WAF compares the entire Host header value against the specified value.

Key information:

• The Host header identifies either a hostname or IP address using the following syntax:

  Host

  Host:Port

• The CDN only accepts HTTP/HTTPS requests on standard ports (i.e., 80 and 443). Typically, a Host request header does not include port information for standard ports. However, the requesting user agent defines the Host request header submitted to the CDN.
• For the purpose of this comparison, the hostname defined by this match condition will not be resolved to an IP address.
• For the purpose of this comparison, a customer origin's HTTP Host Header option is irrelevant.

• WAF supports various comparison modes (i.e., exact match, wildcard, and regular expression).

  Learn more.

URL Path

By default, a Security Application Manager configuration applies to all URL paths. However, you may limit a Security Application Manager configuration to one or more URL paths. WAF compares the entire URL path against the specified value.

Key information:

• URL path comparisons start directly after the hostname.

  /path/asset

  Example:

  /marketing/brochures/widget.htm

• A partial match does not count towards the rate limit.

  Example:

  Given the above sample configuration, the following request would not count towards the rate limit:

  http://cdn.example.com/marketing/brochures/widget.html

• WAF supports various comparison modes (i.e., exact match, wildcard, and regular expression).

  Learn more.

Match Comparison Modes

Your Security Application Manager configuration determines how WAF compares a request's host or URL path against the specified value. The available modes are listed below.

• Default: WAF will not perform a comparison. It will apply the current Security Application Manager configuration to all hosts or URL paths.
• Exact match (multiple entries): Use this mode to specify each desired value.

• Wildcard match: Use this mode to specify a wildcard pattern.

• Regex match: Use this mode to specify a regular expression.

Wildcard and regular expression match comparison modes require WAF Premier, WAF Standard, or WAF Essentials. If you currently have WAF Insights and would like to use this capability, please contact your CDN account manager to upgrade to the full version.

Exact Match (Multiple Entries)

WAF compares the specified value(s) against the entire host or URL path. It will only apply this Security Application Manager configuration to a request when one of the specified value(s) is an exact match. This comparison is case-sensitive.

Sample Configuration:

Matches:

Does Not Match:

Wildcard Match

WAF checks whether the entire host or URL path is a case-sensitive match for the wildcard pattern. The supported set of wildcards are listed below.

Wildcard	Description	Example	Matches	Does Not Match
*	Matches zero or more characters.	cat*	cat category muscat	cAt Category
?	Matches a single character.	cat?	cats muscats	Cats cat
[abc]	Matches a single character defined within the brackets.	[cm]art	cart mart	tart start
[a-z]	Matches a single character from the specified range.	[a-z]art	cart mart tart	Cart marT start
[!abc]	Matches a single character that is not defined within the brackets.	[!cm]art	Cart Mart tart	cart mart tArt
[!a-z]	Matches a single character that is excluded from the specified range.	[!a-m]art	Cart Mart tart	cart mart tArt

Example:

Setting the URL path(s) option to the following value allows WAF to apply this Security Application Manager configuration to any request whose URL path starts with /marketing/:

The following sample request will match the above pattern:

Regex Match

WAF checks whether the entire host or URL path is a match for the pattern defined in a regular expression.

Regular expressions are case-sensitive.

Sample Configuration:

Matches:

Does Not Match:

Threat Detection

Identify threats by adding the following rule(s) to your Security Application Manager configuration:

• Access Rules: An access rule identifies legitimate traffic and threats through access control lists.

• Rate Rules: A rate rule identifies malicious or unnecessary traffic through traffic patterns.

  Requests that originate from rate limited clients will not count towards the rate limit. Upon the expiration of the time period defined in the Time period option, we will resume counting these requests. If the client exceeds the rate limit again, then this action will be reapplied to it for the duration defined by this option.

  A "client" is defined by each rule according to the rate rule's Apply rate limit to option. For example, configuring that option to Any request will apply the selected action to all requests regardless of the number of requests generated by each device. Alternatively, identifying clients by IP address will only apply the selected action to requests that originate from each IP address that violates the specified rate limit.

• Bot Manager Standard: A bot rule identifies traffic generated by basic bots by requiring clients to solve a browser challenge before serving content.
• Bot Manager Advanced: A bot manager configuration determines how good bots and bots that are spoofing good bots will be handled. Additionally, you may define a custom traffic profile through which bots will be identified and mitigated (e.g., block, redirect, or browser challenge).

• Custom Rules: A custom rule identifies threats using custom criteria that takes into account your site's traffic profile to avoid false positives.

  The Custom rules capability requires WAF Premier or WAF Standard. If you currently have WAF Essentials or WAF Insights and would like to use custom rules, please contact your CDN account manager to upgrade to the full version.

• Managed Rules: A managed rule identifies threats through threat detection policies.

You may apply an access, custom, or managed rule in one of the following modes:

• Production: This mode secures your application by allowing you to choose from a variety of actions through which your security policy will be enforced.

• Audit: This mode allows you to test new security policies without impacting production traffic. Requests that are identified as threats are logged. Use the Threats dashboard to analyze detected threats and check for false positives. You should apply this security policy to production traffic once you are confident that it will generate minimal false positives.

  Rate rules and Bot Manager may only run in production mode. You cannot run them in audit mode.

Auditing a profile that is already being applied to production traffic will cause the same threat to be logged twice.

Enforcement

You may customize how rules that run in production mode will be enforced. Enforcement is triggered when:

• A threat is detected when the security policy defined within an access rule, bot manager configuration, custom rule, or managed rule is violated.
• A rate limit defined within a rate rule is exceeded.

Key information:

• WAF will only generate alerts for rules that run in audit mode. This enforcement action cannot be customized.
• Rate rules and Bot Manager may only run in production mode. You cannot run them in audit mode.
• Bot Manager enforcement action(s) are defined within a Bot Manager configuration.

The available enforcement actions are described below.

Mode	Description
Alert Only	Rate limited requests or detected threats will only generate an alert. Our recommendation for testing new configurations is to use audit mode instead of applying the Alert Only enforcement action to a rule running in production mode. WAF applies a single enforcement action per mode (i.e., production or audit). Once enforcement is triggered for that mode, WAF does not perform further evaluation of that request. We recommend that you limit your use of the Alert Only enforcement in production mode to the shortest amount of time necessary to validate changes to your configuration.
Block Request	Access Rules, Custom Rules, and Managed Rules Detected threats will be dropped and the client will receive a 403 Forbidden response.
Custom Response	Rate limited requests or detected threats will receive a custom response. Response Body: Define the payload that will be delivered to the client in response to a detected threat. This option supports the use of event variables to customize the response according to the detected threat. Sample payload for a CSS file: body { background-color: #ffffff; } HTTP Status Code: Defines the HTTP status code that will be sent to the client. View a list of valid HTTP status codes. 100 101 102 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 226 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 421 422 423 424 426 428 429 431 451 500 501 502 503 504 505 507 508 509 510 511 Custom Response Headers: Defines one or more response headers that will be sent to the client. Define each custom response header on a separate line. Syntax: Name:Value Example: MyCustomHeader: True This option supports the use of event variables to customize the response according to the detected threat. All characters, including spaces, defined before or after the colon will be treated as a part of the specified header name or value, respectively.
Drop request	Rate Rules Only Rate limited requests will be dropped and the client will receive the following response: HTTP status code: 503 Service Unavailable Response header: Retry-After: 10 seconds The Retry-After response header provides a hint to the client as to when service may resume.
Redirect (HTTP 302)	Rate limited requests or detected threats will be redirected to the specified URL. Key information: The HTTP status code for this response will be a 302 Found. Set the URL option to the full URL to which rate limited requests or detected threats will be redirected. Example: http://cdn.mydomain.com/marketing/busy.html

Event Variables

A custom response header value or a custom response body may include variables that describe the event. These variables are described below.

Variable	Description
EVENT_ID	Represents the system-defined ID assigned to the request that was identified as a threat. Find out detailed information about the detected threat by passing this ID to the Get Event Log Entry endpoint (REST API). Learn more.
CLIENT_IP	Represents the IP address of the device that submitted the detected threat.
TIMESTAMP	Represents the date and time at which the detected threat was submitted.
REQUEST_URL	Represents the URL for the request that was deemed a threat.

Add an event variable to a custom response header value or a custom response body by enclosing it with double curly braces.

Example:

Order of Precedence

The recommended practice is to create a Security Application Manager configuration that is tuned for each of your applications. This allows you to apply a restrictive security policy with minimal false positives. Each Security Application Manager configuration's host and URL path conditions determine the set of traffic to which it may be applied. If a request is eligible to be screened by multiple Security Application Manager configurations, then WAF will screen it using the first eligible configuration in the list.

Reorder Security Application Manager configurations by dragging the desired configuration's icon to the desired position.

Security Application Manager Administration

You may create, modify, and delete Security Application Manager configurations.

Key information:

• Administer Security Application Manager configurations from the Security Application Manager page.

• Identify the set of traffic (e.g., all requests or by customer origin) to which your security policy will be applied by balancing the need to secure as much traffic as possible with the level of restrictive measures imposed by it.

  The recommended approach is to apply the most restrictive policy to as much traffic as possible while causing minimal impact to data delivery.

• Apply access rules, rate rules, custom rules, and managed rules to production traffic by adding it to a Security Application Manager configuration and then determining how it will be enforced.

  Rules are administered independently from Security Application Manager configurations. This allows you to use the same rule within multiple Security Application Manager configurations. Leverage this capability to tailor security screening by application or traffic profile.

  Define the enforcement action(s) for Bot Manager when setting up your Bot Manager configuration.

• Use audit mode to verify that new access rules, custom rules, and managed rules will not generate substantial false positives.
• It may take up to 2 minutes for an updated Security Application Manager configuration to be applied across our entire network.

To create a Security Application Manager configuration

1. Navigate to the Security Application Manager page. How?From the main menu, navigate to More | Security | WAF Tier | Security Application Manager.

2. Click Add New.
3. In the Name option, type the unique name by which this Security Application Manager configuration will be identified.

4. Optional. Identify the set of traffic to which this security policy will be applied by defining a hostname and/or URL path through the Hostname and URL path(s) options.

   Select one of the following modes:

   • Default: Use this mode to apply this Security Application Manager configuration regardless of the request's host or URL path.

   • Exact match (multiple entries): Use this mode to apply this Security Application Manager configuration to the specified hostname(s) or URL path(s).

     Learn more.

   • Wildcard match: Use this mode to apply this Security Application Manager configuration to all hostnames or URL paths that satisfy the specified wildcard pattern.

     Learn more.

   • Regex match: Use this mode to apply this Security Application Manager configuration to all hostnames or URL paths that satisfy the specified regular expression pattern.

     Learn more.

   Enable the Negative match option to configure a Security Application Manager configuration to look for requests that do not match the specified value or pattern.

5. Optional. Select an access rule through which production traffic will be screened and determine how threats identified by it are handled.

   If you have not already created the desired access rule, you can save your Security Application Manager configuration, create an access rule, edit your Security Application Manager configuration, and then resume this procedure.

   1. From the Rules section, click Access Rule.
   2. From the Production Access Rule option, select the desired access rule.
   3. Optional. From the Action name option, type a name that describes the enforcement action configuration.

   4. From the Action type option, determine how threats identified by the access rule selected in step ii will be handled (i.e., block, alert, redirect, or send a custom response).

      Learn more.

6. Optional. Audit production traffic using a new access rule.

   1. From the Rules section, click Access Rule.
   2. From the Audit Access Rule option, select the desired access rule.

   Filter the Threats dashboard by the above access rule or the audit profile type to track detected threats.

   Disable auditing by setting the Audit Managed Rule option to No Audit Rule.

7. Optional. Select a rate rule through which production traffic will be rate limited.

   If you have not already created the desired rate rule, you can save your Security Application Manager configuration, create a rate rule, edit your Security Application Manager configuration, and then resume this procedure.

   1. From the Rules section, click Rate Rules.

   2. From the Add Rate Rule option, select the desired rate rule.

      If the selected rate rule contains a condition group, then a request must satisfy the Security Application Manager configuration's host and URL path match conditions and all of the conditions within at least one condition group in order to be eligible for rate limiting.

   3. Optional. From the Action name option, type a name that describes the enforcement action configuration.

   4. From the Action type option, determine how threats identified by the managed rule selected in step ii will be handled (i.e., drop request, alert, redirect, or send a custom response).

      Learn more.

      WAF does not perform further evaluation of a request once enforcement is triggered.
      
      For this reason, we recommend that you limit your use of the Alert Only enforcement to the shortest amount of time necessary to validate changes to your configuration.

   5. From the Time period option, select the time period for which the action selected in the next step will be applied to clients that exceed the rate limit defined in the rate rule selected in step ii.

      A "client" is defined by each rate rule according to the Apply rate limit to option. For example, configuring that option to Any request will apply the selected action to all requests regardless of the number of requests generated by each device. Alternatively, identifying clients by IP Address will only apply the selected action to requests that originate from each IP address that violates the specified rate limit.

   6. If you would like to apply an additional rate limit, then repeat steps ii - v.

      Use multiple rate rules to apply different rate limits to various traffic profiles. Set up this type of configuration using either a single or multiple Security Application Manager configurations. If you assign multiple rate rules to a single Security Application Manager configuration, then each rate rule should contain one or more condition group(s).

8. Optional. Select a bot rule that identifies the set of production traffic that will be screened by Bot Manager.

   If you have not already created the desired bot rule, you can save your Security Application Manager configuration, create a Bot Manager Basic or Advanced configuration, edit your Security Application Manager configuration, and then resume this procedure.

   1. From the Rules section, click Bot Manager.
   2. From the Production Bot Manager option, select the desired Bot Manager configuration.

9. Optional. Select a custom rule through which production traffic will be screened and determine how threats identified by it are handled.

   If you have not already created the desired custom rule, you can save your Security Application Manager configuration, create a custom rule, edit your Security Application Manager configuration, and then resume this procedure.

   1. From the Rules section, click Custom Rule.
   2. From the Production Custom Rule option, select the desired custom rule.
   3. Optional. From the Action name option, type a name that describes the enforcement action configuration.

   4. From the Action type option, determine how threats identified by the custom rule selected in step ii will be handled (i.e., block, alert, redirect, or send a custom response).

      Learn more.

10. Optional. Audit production traffic using a new custom rule.

    1. From the Rules section, click Custom Rule.
    2. From the Audit Custom Rule option, select the desired custom rule.

    Filter the Threats dashboard by the above custom rule or the audit profile type to track detected threats.

    Disable auditing by setting the Audit Custom Rule option to No Audit Rule.

11. Optional. Select a managed rule through which production traffic will be screened and determine how threats identified by it are handled.

    If you have not already created the desired manged rule, you can save your Security Application Manager configuration, create a managed rule, edit your Security Application Manager configuration, and then resume this procedure.

    1. From the Rules section, click Managed Rule.
    2. From the Production Managed Rule option, select the desired managed rule.
    3. Optional. From the Action name option, type a name that describes the enforcement action configuration.

    4. From the Action type option, determine how threats identified by the managed rule selected in step ii will be handled (i.e., block, alert, redirect, or send a custom response).

       Learn more.

12. Optional. Audit production traffic using a new managed rule.

    1. From the Rules section, click Managed Rule.
    2. From the Audit Managed Rule option, select the desired managed rule.

    Filter the Threats dashboard by the above managed rule or the audit profile type to track detected threats.

    Disable auditing by setting the Audit Managed Rule option to No Audit Rule.

13. Click Save.
14. Click Apply All Changes.
15. Click Save Changes.

To reorder Security Application Manager configurations

1. From the Security Application Manager page , drag the desired configuration's icon to the desired position.
2. Click Apply All Changes.
3. Click Save Changes.

If multiple Security Application Manager configurations are applicable to the same request, then consider updating their host or URL path conditions to a more restrictive pattern.

Traffic is always screened using the first eligible Security Application Manager configuration.

To modify a Security Application Manager configuration

1. Navigate to the Security Application Manager page. How?From the main menu, navigate to More | Security | WAF Tier | Security Application Manager.

2. Click on the desired Security Application Manager configuration.
3. Make the desired changes.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Apply All Changes.
6. Click Save Changes.

To delete a Security Application Manager configuration

1. Navigate to the Security Application Manager page. How?From the main menu, navigate to More | Security | WAF Tier | Security Application Manager.

2. Click on the desired Security Application Manager configuration.
3. Click Delete Security Application Manager.
4. Type DELETE.
5. Click Delete.
6. Click Apply All Changes.
7. Click Save Changes.