Installing a web application firewall (WAF) in your virtual private cloud (VPC) protects your applications against sophisticated threats. Possible threats include Structure Query Language (SQL) injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), malware uploads, and application Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Installing a WAF can improve overall application performance while mitigating risks. Most WAFs include built-in application delivery features such as Secure Socket Layer (SSL) offloading, load balancing, and content caching,

To get the most out of the protection that your WAF provides, you should optimize its configuration for your AWS environment. Different environments require different features to be enabled, and not all the default settings are sufficient for all environments. A well-configured WAF helps minimize unnecessary threat alerts, secure your applications against various types of attacks, and cut costs associated with maintenance. It does this by automatically adjusting the configuration of security policies once established.

Barracuda’s CloudGen WAF product comes with standard configurations and rule sets to enable rapid deployment in your environment. This allows you to quickly get up and running and start protecting your applications, even with complex requirements.

How to configure Barracuda CloudGen WAF on your Amazon VPC

Prerequisites

In this post, I will show how to set up and configure the Barracuda CloudGen WAF software product from AWS Marketplace. Barracuda CloudGen WAF creates an optimized cloud-based WAF for your web applications. With built-in access controls, this software allows you to create highly specific policies for Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA). This enables tight management access to sensitive applications and data.

To install Barracuda CloudGen WAF:

1. Select the right Barracuda CloudGen WAF product that is right for you in AWS Marketplace.
2. On the upper right corner of the product detail page, select Continue to Subscribe.
3. Finally, choose Subscribe. The next screen is a message saying Congratulations! You are now subscribed!

Configuring your product

Log in

1. Select Continue to Configuration.
2. You can now see an option to choose the Amazon Machine Image (AMI), software version, and Region you want to use. These settings may vary depending on your environment and location. Once you choose your options, select Continue to Launch in the upper right corner of the page.
3. At the next screen, you can select an action either to launch the software through an EC2 instance or to copy to AWS Service Catalog. From the dropdown menu, choose the option to launch through EC2 and then select Launch at the bottom right of the page.
4. Once you launch the EC2 instance, the next screen is the login page for Barracuda CloudGen WAF for AWS. Log in to it by entering the initial login credentials, which are:

Username: admin

Password: The EC2 instance ID number. You can find this ID number in the second column from the right under your running EC2 instances in the AWS Console (example: i-56146er654erghe).

Select configurations

1. After you log in, the next screen is the main dashboard page for Barracuda CloudGen WAF for AWS. See the following screenshot of the main dashboard page.

2. Navigate through all items under the Basic, Security Policies, Websites, Access Control, Networks, and Advanced main tabs. Complete all configuration items that pertain to your organization.

Conclusion

In this post, I showed you how to start configuring Barracuda CloudGen WAF from AWS Marketplace. Installing and configuring this WAF to suit your AWS environment will allow for greater control over authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) security policies. It will also help protect against application attacks and data loss.

Next steps

For more information on Barracuda CloudGen WAF and other cloud-based firewall products, watch a Getting Started tutorial video showing this process and download the detailed seller guide. You can also view the webinar How to Secure a Modern Web Application in AWS and explore other Barracuda CloudGen Firewall products in AWS Marketplace.