Imperva Web Application Firewall Reviews

I was involved in the deployment and found that all the features in this product are fantastic, especially the correlated attack validation, threat radar (reputation, fraud), and virtual patching. Those are features that are very useful in day to day operations.

Using WAF in an organization means we can quickly see the attacks that the environment is suffering and take action to mitigate the threat(s). It is possible to view traffic and analyze it to determine if it is legitimate traffic or not, using features such as threat radar and geolocation, helping the security team in the company.

I've been using the WAF component for over a year.

I had no issues with deployment.

I had no issues with stability.

I had no issues with scalability.

I didn't use the customer service, but all the teams in Imperva have a deep knowledge about the product to support customers for any issues they have.

The technical support team at Imperva have a deep knowledge of all their solutions, and they are ready to support any customer with any problem.

The initial setup is different for each environment. You need knowledge of the environment and application, to make a good schedule of activities. Make sure you validate the requirements, and the setup will be simpler to do

I work as a System Engineer and part of my role is to help the partners do deployments for our customers. I participated in some deployments, and I can say the partners I have worked with have good knowledge about deployment and support for all solutions.

All products are good, and I believe narrowing the choice of manufacturer is best done when you do proof of concepts in-house and you can see which of your choices is best matched to your needs.

My experience is to integrate this application. It's a firewall. You must connect it with the traffic the infrastructure must be routed through this firewall in order to block and search for any problems with the applications.

As a system, it's very effective at blocking potentially malicious items. The security is very good.

The solution can scale.

The stability has been pretty good.

Technical support is helpful.

The initial setup is rather straightforward.

In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy.

I've been working with the solution for about three years or so.

I have previously found bugs within the solution and in the past, I have contacted Imperva in order to deal with them to get them resolved.

That said, for the most part, I have found the solution to be quite stable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It works well. 

The solution can scale.

We typically deal with medium-sized enterprises as clients. Typically, these companies have around 500,000 or so employees. They aren't massive, however, they are quite sizeable. 

I've dealt with technical support on multiple occasions and I find them to be very helpful and responsive. They are knowledgeable. We're very happy with the level of service we get. 

The initial setup is straightforward, although it does take time to integrate the solution into your existing infrastructure.

As an integrator, I can help clients set up the solution at their companies.

I'm not sure what the exact licensing costs are for the solution. I can't speak to the pricing. It's not part of my responsibilities to cover sales or billing.

Imperva has different three parts - the Web Application Firewall (WAF), Incapsula for cloud, and DAM for database firewalls. This is in one central monitor.

We aren't using the latest version of the solution.

We use the solution as a customer as well as an integrator.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's very good. We've been quite happy with its overall capabilities.

Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code.

An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics. In the next release, Imperva WAF should include more use cases for Advanced Persistent Threats and next emission sophisticated attacks.

I've been working with Imperva WAF for six to seven months.

Imperva WAF is scalable.

Imperva's technical support is very good.

I'd recommend Imperva WAF as a good product in terms of occupation perspective and strong WAF. I'd rate it as seven out of ten.

We are an implementer for clients within the financial services looking to protect their internet, mobile devices, etc.

There are a number of features that are valuable such as the account takeover and various antivirus features.

It would be nice to have more security control over mobile applications so I would suggest adding more mobile security features. 

It would also be beneficial to see improvements in regards to interface bandwidth performance, CPU time, and RAM size.

Learning capability of the device is quite weak.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The solution is stable and has strong performance.

The solution is scalable and is currently being met with high demand on the clients side.

Support response time to a given problem could be much faster. This may be due to time zone limitations as well as the amount of time it takes the representative to understand the scope of the issue.

Initial installation requires a lot of customizations that depend on the environment and use case of the client. For clients looking to maximize all policies, settings, and features provided, their setup could take up to one year.

Two engineers are required for deployment.

Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well.

This is a good WAF solution that I would rate a nine out of ten.

I am a distributor for Imperva. We provide solutions for our customers. 

This solution is mainly used to protect websites. When it is deployed on the cloud it is used for traffic redirection and URL redirection functionality.

It is also used for dual location blocking and security for the policies that are being applied.

Imperva is a good solution.

It has fewer false positives. It is very simple to maintain the device. It is also simple to configure. You don't need to have any HTTP knowledge or understand the HTTP programming languages when it comes to configuring the device.

The visibility of the actual traffic needs to be improved. 

We are only monitoring the traffic if there are any issues and the alerts are being triggered. 

We don't log the real-time traffic. We only log the real-time attacks and not the normal traffic that is passing through the device.

The main concern for our customers is to improve the visibility of the actual traffic. Customers feel that is the one feature that will greatly improve Imperva. 

They would like to have the complete network traffic passing through the device. Currently, we are only being alerted for the attack that has passed through the device instead of the genuine traffic.

We would like to see logs of the genuine traffic that passes through the device. It can be optional to enable it for certain customers and certain applications but should be included.

The support for the on-premises version needs improvement.

We have been distributing Imperva for the last 10 years.

We are currently dealing with the latest version.

We provide both on-premises and cloud deployment, it depends on the customer's requirement.

Once it is configured it is stable. There are no issues with the stability of the Imperva Web Application Firewall.

It is easy to scale. The scalability is fine. You can add gateways and scale, which is a good feature in Imperva.

This device is suitable for everyone.

There are two different support teams. The cloud support is very good, but the on-premises support is lacking. The response time could be much better.

The initial setup is easy if you know how to deploy Imperva. Once we do the base installation, the deployment is simple.

Once in six months, there are some patch upgrades required. If there are specific requirements we need to upgrade.

We were able to complete the installation and deployment ourselves.

When it comes to the cost, there are different sets of customers. Some are SMB and veteran customers who go with the cloud version of Imperva, which is a managed service. The next-level customers and enterprise will select the on-premises version along with the cloud. They prefer the hybrid environment.

There are a couple of different licensing models. One is with respect to the Cloud and is based on the number of applications you have to protect. The on-premises model is based on the throughput that is required to be inspected.

I know that FortiGate is a niche product and wanted to evaluate Impera and FortiGate for the differences.

You should understand the customer's website, what their website is. They need to configure the ciphers properly. Many engineers are not able to complete the project because they don't understand the customer's environment. 

Before doing an implementation, understand the customer's environment. The ciphers need to be configured properly. Some Imperva engineers are not able to complete the projects because they understand the customer's environment.

Know the ciphers being used and match the ciphers. You must ensure the same ciphers are being matched in the backend load balances. If the backend load or cipher is changed the same should be replicated in Imperva as well. Once this is complete it should be good.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Protects and secures all our web sites.

• Learning mode.
• Custom policies.
• Very intuitive and granular configuration - It does not require much time, or advanced knowledge, for configuration and maintenance.

The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

10 out of 10 for local support, seven out of 10 for Imperva Professional Services.

Straightforward. Easy to install and config.

F5.

I rate it a 10 out of 10 because of the ability to apply real-time changes or creations, export and import applications learned, and it's very easy to use. It also features system logs or incidents, granular configuration in relation to a SIEM. It is the best product on the market, in my opinion. Cyber security leader.

I really like the profiling section. I mean that signature based policies are ok and they are maybe the most widespread and common kind of security policy in security appliances, but, the profiling policies are custom tailored on a specific web application. I guess it’s the most valuable, and fresh, aspect about SecureSphere.

It has helped a lot with working among, and creating a link between, different teams in my organization, of course I’m referring to security, networking and system application teams. It’s important to find the right collaboration in order to secure the applications from the beginning of the deployment process.

I guess the GUI could be improved a little, as it’s not always simple to get. The most important aspect to me that needs improvement though, is that, by default, if you put activate and protect a server group you created, all the web applications lying on the same group of physical machines, inherit the same policy rule set. This means it’s not so easy to different policies and cut them on a specific application (maybe I’ll ask the vendor support).

It’s been one-and-a-half years.

Not in particular, once I understand the network behavior and the different types of the WAF deployment it was pretty simple and fast.

Not so far. It must be said, though, that It’s a relatively a new installment in our infrastructure, and maybe it’s too soon to say.

It’s an ongoing process day to day, working alongside systems and application engineers to adapt the WAF to better meet the applications characteristics. I guess it depends a lot on the application features and software implementation.

I would say that they are pretty available.

They are reliable and ready to solve your issues.

To be honest, we have been supported by a professional services engineer who showed us the peculiarities during the initial setup, so it was a good experience. I would say that it’s straightforward if you are in good hands.

I would say to focus on the most convenient area for positioning the WAF in order to take the get the best out of it. In my case, we chose a WAF appliance, and it’s crucial where to put it. For instance, we chose to deploy it downstream from the load balancing network infrastructure for various reasons. One of them was to enable the WAF to see the private IP addresses that a vulnerability assessment tool in the private DMZ would see in order to use the WAF as an application firewall and as a virtual patching tool either.

Its inline transferring mode is the most valuable because it is 100% transparent. When you change the IP, there is no change on the network side. If you can't and want to try to reach an IP, you can reach the server IP. There are many other advanced security features in it.

The smallest appliances of Imperva can handle the highest traffic at a customer site. For example, a smaller appliance from Imperva can provide you the same security as an F5 product. 

They can provide an option to create a report, automatically import the entire report, and create rules again. In a real-life crisis, it would be helpful to be able to import a report and generate security rules from that report. I should be able to create a simple query and import the reports automatically. It can maybe also tell us the format of the report.

I have been using this solution for more than nine years.

It is very stable.

It is easy to scale up.

After nine years with Imperva, we know mostly everything about it, and we are using it very deeply. None of the support can handle us when it comes to R&D. They are able to help us with all other categories.

The initial setup is very easy. You can just plug it in, and it asks you some questions about the IP address, DNS, SSL, etc. After that, it asks you for license codes, and everything is online. It is easy to deploy. You don't have to change any network configuration.

There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features.

Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell.

In Turkey, we mostly have on-premises deployments. There are some Azure Amazon projects, but it is mostly deployed on-premises. It is not so easy to send Incapsula solutions to Turkey.

I would recommend this solution. It is easy to manage and expand. I would rate Imperva SecureSphere Web Application Firewall a ten out of ten.