We have external facing sites that our clients use, and it's important that those are protected. It's a traditional use case. The end-users are the firm clients trying to come into the firm using firm applications. So, this is the external perimeter, and that's the typical use case.
It gives you more insights into what may be happening in your environment. It doesn't free up people's time, but it helps them add an additional data point so that they can be better informed. In that sense, it improves efficiency. When you are in the security mindset, you want to make sure you have the ability to gain as many insights as possible for a potential attack. The intent is never around freeing up time.
It provides the first level of defense against external threats trying to come into the environment, but it's one of the many toolkits we use.
I'm the global head of cybersecurity across all business lines with a prime focus on audit risk and compliance. I look at Radware in terms of the ability to do two things. One is being very well aware of what's happening in the industry and the threat landscape, and the relative to that is the right sizing of the product so that the product can identify those emerging threats in time and then block them. That's essentially what I'm expecting Radware to do. The ability to provide some insights into lookback is equally important, which means you found something today but that doesn't mean that it happened today. It could have happened many moons ago. That lookback is equally important. There is a lot more that is expected from Radware's automated analytics for looking at events. There needs to be more context of where protection is required these days.
I have used the API Discovery feature. It's relatively easy to use, but it pales to some of the tools that currently exist in the marketplace. They may be a little more sophisticated than what Radware provides. A lot of work needs to be done out there for the end-to-end API protection offered by the API Discovery feature. It's a good first step, but Radware isn't there yet. Similarly, in terms of integrating with other systems and applications in our environment, a lot more work needs to be done out there.
The visibility of API relative to data flow and contextual understanding of what that is for a business is extremely important, and APIs don't seem to cut it. The majority of the attacks take place in memory, so you need to make sure that there is close alignment around how you view that and draw conclusions based on that data. Right-sizing is based on the industry because some of them have the same set of APIs and the same set of structures from which you can easily draw context and draw conclusions in terms of what's happening.
We've been using it for two years. It came to us with an acquisition.
They've had one odd outage. You can't have an outage in that business. They got to get a little better for enterprise-grade.
They have been collaborative. They were eager to have the firm's business, so we received the kind of support we wanted, and that's fair. We have no complaints, and there is nothing that stands out of the ordinary. I'd rate them a seven out of ten.
Neutral
In an organization of our size, you don't have one single vendor. It's a layered defense model. You don't have one single product that you're heavily reliant on. From that perspective, Radware is a part of the ecosystem.
In terms of blocking unknown threats and attacks, Radware is at par with other firms. There is nothing extraordinary. The protection it provides is comparable. It isn't superior. It's amongst the top three or four, but it's definitely not number one.
It required tuning to meet our requirements, but that's true for all products.
It was implemented in-house. There were four people involved in its implementation.
The value proposition of a product is based on not just one feature set. It's based on the suite of features and the impact. It's no different than the value of a security guard outside the building. It's justified in case you have a major attack and it has been able to thwart that attack, but up until that point, you won't be able to say, "Hey, what is the true value that I'm getting out of this?"
When you're getting this or any other solution, you need to look at three things.
I've used CDN services offered by Radware in conjunction with Cloud WAF. Radware is in the same ballpark compared to the industry leaders, though some of the industry leaders are a little sophisticated in terms of features and offerings. However, there are certain areas towards which the industry isn't evolving, and Radware can obviously position itself so that it can succeed.
Overall, I'd rate Radware Cloud WAF Service a seven out of ten. There is a lot they can do. They're in a good position. They have their foot in the door. They need to just up their game.
