Imperva Web Application Firewall Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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. 

This is one of the solutions that we provide to our customers.

We use this solution for application-level security, above layer four protection where the firewall cannot reach.

I have worked with both on-premises and cloud deployments.

The most valuable feature is the out-of-the-box detection engine. It has the ability to detect some of these things without being configured. There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection.

The visibility provided by this solution can be improved. I often tell my customers that "You can't fight what you can't see". I can recall a time when I did a presentation after a deployment, and it prompted them to put the solution into enforcement mode immediately. Normally, we wait one week with the solution in monitoring mode. However, once they saw the types of vulnerabilities they had, they wanted to take action right away. It gave them a great deal of knowledge, and knowing that they are protected from these types of attacks has boosted their confidence.

This solution has a lot of features, and some of the students were confused when I was discussing them. It would be helpful to have a "recommended deployment", or even a list of basic features that should either be used or turned on by default. If somebody has installed the product several times but is doing the same thing incorrectly, then they get experienced in doing the wrong thing. You should be able to specify which assets you need to be protected, and the solution will tell you the minimum in terms of features that need to be turned on. If you need more advanced protection then the others will become relevant.

Imperva partner training is something that I would be interested in if it ever came my way. There should be partner-specific webinars, meetings, and other training provided to us,

So far, I don't think that we've had any issues with this solution in terms of stability. People discussing this solution have given the same remark.

This solution is used on almost a daily basis.

Scalability of this solution is based on the design. If you get your design right, then you shouldn't have a problem with the scalability.

While we were installing this solution, we had contact with technical support and they were good. I have referenced information that is on their site and it is helpful, as well.

During the initial installation, there was a warning that was not part of the known CVEs. When I checked with support, they told me that this type of problem is blocked out-of-the-box. However, if I wanted to be really sure, they showed me how to create a custom policy, or custom rule, to specifically deal with it.

I have used other solutions, but I usually follow the Gartner reports and their suggestions. My previous solution had not been doing too well.

Also, as I became more familiar with this solution, it became easier for me to identify issues. I had also read research on Imperva blocking denial-of-service attacks, and I like practical evidence of issues such as this. By reading these articles, and about other people's experiences, it is like seeing it for myself. With other solutions, you are not privy to such visibility.

Complexity and cost are two important factors when it came to choosing this solution.

Unless the client has as serious issues and does not want Imperva, this is my first choice.

The initial setup of this solution was not too straightforward. We did have to contact Imperva during the deployment. The length of time for deployment depends on the experience of the people performing the installation, as well as the environment.

My team and I performed the implementation of this solution. To make sure that we were on track, we contacted Imperva support for some clarification. Most of the things that we do, we follow best practices.

Everybody complains about the price of this solution. 

This is a security device, and it is used almost every day. It is not just used when there is an issue. Based on what the dashboard or the reports say, you can change policies to meet your security requirements or business needs.

Based on my experience, and what I know this product can do, I would never recommend another solution. I advise most of my customers to go for this.

I would rate this solution a nine 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.

We are a solution provider and Imperva is one of the products that we implement for our clients. They use it as an application firewall.

If you are using the appliance as opposed to the virtual deployment, it can stand as the network layer-two and provide real transparency. This is better than the competitors.

Imperva SecureSphere integrates well with other tools.

The user interface could be better.

I have been working with Imperva SecureSphere for about four years.

Imperva solutions are the best in terms of stability.

I have not faced any trouble with scalability because you can easily upgrade the appliance. 

I am regularly in contact with Imperva support and I am satisfied with them.

The initial setup is very basic and really easy to do. I wouldn't say that everybody, such as non-technical, people can do the setup and configuration. However, people with a mid-level of experience in application firewalls can do it easily.

The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors.

My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is that if they want a stable product with good scalability then they can choose Imperva. The price is a little bit higher than that of the competitors, which largely impacts whether customers choose Imperva. In fact, if you don't care about budget then Imperva is the only solution for an application firewall.

My only complaint is that the user interface could be better.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution. 

Most of the clients are new to this solution and don't have an in-depth knowledge of the solution. It's not so well-known in Ethiopia. Imperva has only been around for a year. 

Licensing should be improved. Most of the clients aren't happy. It's expensive. 

Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved. Also, it should have a privileged account option. In the solution, if you put it there, that would be a very nice feature so that the clients could get all those solutions in one box. It will be easier for support and for clients. 

It's a relatively new product but from the information I got from the Bank of Ethiopia, the stability is okay. They are getting what they are expecting from the product.

Scalability is good especially compared to IBM. It's not so easy to integrate with another solution from another vendor. 

The initial setup was complex. 

The company has to deeply work on it. Also, with regard to support for the distributor, distributors have a big problem. We got the wrong consigning. It was kept for more than three months in a customs warehouse because of the issue of the problems on the distributor side. That is a big problem.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Imperva is good because it doesn't also only monitor but it also does acquisition.