Cisco announces a Web Application Firewall

Cisco has jumped into the WAF game with their recently announced Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall. A full proxy device with HTTP(s) and XML policy enforcement, web-based/shell management interfaces, solid performance metrics, and support for both black and white list rules. Apparently Cisco sees a sizable market for WAFs and PCI 6.6 as a driver by reading their overview literature (video). So now most big players have a stake in webappsec. This should make things interesting. With Cisco’s brand reputation and reach, people might be willing to get over their initial trust issues with WAFs and do quite well. Should customers demand, perhaps another device we can integrate Sentinel with for virtual patching purposes. The interest has been quite impressive.