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Cloudflare vs Imperva DDoS vs Imperva SecureSphere Database Security 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Database Security
 

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.
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.
Andrew_Kampolo - PeerSpot reviewer
The fine-grained auditing available on the platform makes life easier and helps explain anything happening in your database
Imperva's most valuable features are ease of use and log correlation. I also like the ability to trace activity from the host machine to the server access, the user details, and the exact query that they executed. If a database administrator or application process executes a query on the database, people know exactly what was executed, including all the variables. For example, it will tell you how many rows they were trying to select on which table, and you get the OS information, network details, IPs, and the user. That fine-grained auditing available on the platform makes life easier and helps explain anything happening in your database.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"It's very user-friendly."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"The solution is very good at intercepting traffic before it gets to our data centers."
"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."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"IncapRules is one of the most valuable features, as you can create your own security and access control rules on top of your security policy. Using IncapRules we were able to easily block Layer 7 DDoS attacks several times."
"I like the user-friendly interface."
"Integration with IBM AS/400 and Db2 is okay."
"Scalability is pretty easy on the base platform. You just add another, and you're ready to go."
"This product is a reliable defense from malicious attacks on a network environment."
"The technical support for Imperva is super, super, super."
"The integration is great."
"As we are very sensitive to financial impacts, this product provides great protection for our organization."
"The most valuable features of Imperva SecureSphere Database Security are vulnerability assessment, enrichment security policy, and security"
"The cyber intelligence feature is the most valuable."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The integration with CounterBreach is great."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and affordable for small and medium enterprises."
 

Cons

"The product needs to improve its automation."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"It's quite expensive."
"It needs to be improved every time there are new attacks."
"Certificate management could be improved."
"The product could use a broader scope in the area of policies."
"Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive."
"It would be better if we were able to manage and apply changes to multiple websites/web applications, and search WAF logs for multiple websites, via the Incapsula dashboard."
"There’s nothing that’s missing in terms of features."
"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."
"Database security from the access management perspective could be better."
"Technical support for this solution needs improvement."
"I would like to see improvement in the integration part of the tool. This should be an easy process."
"I'd like to see some sort of solution for storage."
"The updates could be better."
"Performance can be slow under heavy loads, but this should be adjusted by scaling."
"Sometimes the reports are cumbersome, and you have to drill down to get more information."
"The agent does not monitor databases in the containers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"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."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"It is expensive."
"Its pricing could be cheaper for the African countries or developing economies. The British pound is valued way more than the currency of most African countries. A better or cheaper pricing model for Nigerian and African customers would be better. It has a per-year subscription model. You pay exactly for what you need. That's all. You don't have to buy what you don't need."
"It is very expensive."
"They have introduced new price models, which makes the product more affordable now."
"The price of the solution is reasonable and it requires a license."
"The price is very high but compared to the price of the overall solution, then I think it's a good deal because the solution itself is great."
"It is quite expensive. We wanted it in my former organization, but the price was very high. So, we couldn't purchase it. I moved to a different organization, and this organization has purchased it."
"Licensing fees are on a yearly basis, and it is a good value for the money."
"The product’s price is reasonable compared to other products."
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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
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
15%
Insurance Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
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 prov...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive. Additionally, support response times for emails can sometimes be d...
How does IBM Guardium Data Protection compare with Imperva SecureSphere Database Security?
IBM Security Guardium Data Protection is a solution for database security from IBM that gives complete visibility, co...
What do you like most about Imperva SecureSphere Database Security?
The tool's pricing is flexible and affordable for small and medium enterprises.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Imperva Incapsula
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Radware, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: March 2025.
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