External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Advanced protection has secured our websites and reduces DDoS and zero‑day attack incidents
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The best features Imperva Application Security Platform offers are for speed and protection. There is runtime and zero protection, and we have the sub and sub plus protection.
The speed and protection features of Imperva Application Security Platform help my team day-to-day by providing safe and clear access to the website. For example, my company is a multinational company that experiences many attacks, such as DDoS attacks, hitting the general website of the company before. The protection protects all of the websites in Imperva, so accessing the website is safer right now, not disrupted by DDoS attacks.
Imperva Application Security Platform has positively impacted my organization by making the website more secure. It reduces the DDoS attacks and reduces the attacks from threat actors, including SQL Injection and zero-day attacks, by using dynamic application profiling from Imperva. This is very helpful for my company as it reduces the incidents from the website.
What needs improvement?
I would suggest that Imperva Application Security Platform should include new features combined with AI. When I was using Imperva, it was not yet combined with AI. I believe that AI can now be used to make things easier, to track the attacks or IPs, or perhaps to determine the best configuration for each company that is using Imperva.
For how long have I used the solution?
What other advice do I have?
I would add that I have a unique observation about the features of Imperva Application Security Platform. For protection to protect more safely and restrictively, I have another use case with an internal website. This website is internal, and those people who want to access it can use the VPN or the internal network. I have encountered cases where a person from the internal company wants to access the website without using the API and got blocked by Imperva because there is a feature or configuration that allows specific IPs. I had to log all of the ways to access the web and allow only a few IPs from the internal IPs. I think Imperva is very secure, very restricted, and good for protecting websites, especially for internal websites and production servers.
Regarding improvements to Imperva Application Security Platform, I think all aspects of Imperva Web Application Firewall, including the UI/UX, are good, and I can operate it smoothly with the application. I give this product a rating of 8.5 out of 10.
Continuous monitoring has strengthened our web defenses and has reduced malicious incidents
What is our primary use case?
Regarding my main use case, I first log into the WAF applications, then access the Alerts section. In that section, I can see different types of activity happening in the firewall. I review each alert to determine whether it is legitimate or suspicious activity. I can also view the target IP address and locations, target servers, and the payload that the attacker was using in that alert. I can see the OWASP Top 10 alerts and the event timing to identify when the attack occurred.
What is most valuable?
There are many alerts in Imperva Application Security Platform. For example, there is an OWASP Top 10 alert called SSRF, which is server-side request forgery. If someone attempts to access the server, the WAF blocks that SSRF alert, or RCE, Remote Code Execution alert, blocking immediately based on the signature, not only by the payload or the IP address. That is very effective.
Imperva Application Security Platform has positively impacted my organization because every time an attacker uses a malicious payload or malicious signature that is already included in the signature database of the WAF application or Imperva application, the application directly blocks that particular signature immediately. This capability can help any organization achieve better security outcomes.
What needs improvement?
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
What was our ROI?
What other advice do I have?
I gave it a 10 because it is useful for private organizations and it is very safe to have WAF applications, particularly Imperva Application Security Platform.
The advice I would give to others looking into using Imperva Application Security Platform is that it is safer to use or to have it. My overall rating for this product is 10 out of 10.
Custom policies and rate limiting have strengthened our application security and compliance
What is our primary use case?
Imperva Application Security Platform is used primarily for web application firewall security. My organization has a significant number of applications running through the platform, and to monitor those applications, we require firewalls. Imperva Application Security Platform's Web Application Firewall performs the deep inspection necessary for this monitoring.
What is most valuable?
Imperva Application Security Platform offers customization of security policies, allowing me to create policies tailored to my environment.
The rate limiting policy in Imperva Application Security Platform works based on usage numbers and has proven valuable for our operations.
Imperva Application Security Platform is user-friendly, and I can maintain a customized dashboard to monitor the utilization of all gateways in day-to-day operations.
Imperva Application Security Platform serves as the base pillar for applications to grant or deny access appropriately.
From a compliance perspective, Imperva Application Security Platform has been an improvement, as it has passed all compliance processes.
What needs improvement?
Imperva Application Security Platform could be improved by providing a more user-friendly dashboard.
I would recommend that support for Imperva Application Security Platform be enhanced to be more effective.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Imperva Application Security Platform for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Imperva Application Security Platform is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability in Imperva Application Security Platform depends on the region. Imperva Application Security Platform can handle more applications or increased traffic easily as my organization grows. Currently, we are running approximately 1000 applications, and it can handle more.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Imperva Application Security Platform is good, though it could be better. I would rate the customer support of Imperva Application Security Platform an eight on a scale of one to ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a return on investment with Imperva Application Security Platform, as we started with a few devices and gradually increased the number of on-premises devices for Imperva Application Security Platform.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Imperva Application Security Platform were user-friendly and good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Imperva Application Security Platform compared to Akamai WAF. It has been good to use Imperva Application Security Platform, as I have been using it for three years. I would rate this review a nine on a scale of one to ten.
Web protection has stopped attacks and now routes only clean traffic to our core applications
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Imperva Application Security Platform is for WAF, application firewall, which is a web application firewall. I have my company's sites, websites, and our core application runs on it as well, so all traffic must first come through Imperva Application Security Platform before it's routed to the application.
A specific example of how I use Imperva Application Security Platform for my core application involves dealing with all the unwanted bots on the internet and crawlers.
Regarding my main use case with Imperva Application Security Platform, it denies all forms of malicious attempts to the sites, including SQL injection, brute force attack, DDoS, and all of that. It denies that and provides information about it through logs that indicate which particular IP was denied and the region, so I have the location based on the IP. I can get the location of where the attacks or injections are coming from. Basically, I receive a clean request based on the rules I've set, made to the server, and then receive their request back, while the ones that are not clean are blocked.
Regarding other features, Imperva Application Security Platform has safe logging capability and, as mentioned earlier, it's primarily for my WAF, web application firewall. Any basic web filtering capabilities are there, and that's all I use it for.
What is most valuable?
The best features Imperva Application Security Platform offers include DDoS protection, anti-DDoS capabilities, and connection protection against different malicious web attacks.
Imperva Application Security Platform has positively impacted my organization, as before its introduction, I usually had a lot of logs on my router, with many foreign attempts from anonymous IPs trying to gain access, including a lot of brute force logs. The CPU of the router would struggle with what it wasn't supposed to be doing while legitimate users suffered. Since implementing Imperva Application Security Platform WAF, as mentioned earlier, only legitimate traffic reaches the server and the router to request what they need, and of course, the response is given. This allows us to accommodate more legitimate traffic, faster and more securely.
While I can't provide a specific metric at this moment as I'm not in front of my system, I can confidently say that we have significantly noticed improved performance in terms of latency, an increased number of requests we can handle, and a reduction in attack attempts.
What needs improvement?
One improvement I would like to see in Imperva Application Security Platform is the ability to fail over to different sites for my same application. I want to have my disaster recovery site, my current site, and my cloud environment, all different, about three sites so that I can load balance across those sites. It would be beneficial if that could be included as a baseline feature without needing a special license.
I also think about the ability of Imperva Application Security Platform to integrate its logs with various systems; the integration with SIEM solutions is limited to certain types of OEM. I would prefer a situation where they are more agnostic in terms of log integration with SIEM solutions, such as SentinelOne.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Imperva Application Security Platform for more than three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Imperva Application Security Platform is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of scalability, I believe it's within their infrastructure; there has never been any downtime.
How are customer service and support?
I use the channel partner for support and have never had a need to raise a ticket directly with Imperva.
How was the initial setup?
Imperva Application Security Platform is deployed in a cloud solution, as I was provided with login details, logged in, and configured Imperva Application Security Platform, putting in my public IP. From Imperva, I received a certain CNAME that I placed in my DNS, so all traffic coming to my domain goes through that DNS, through the CNAME to Imperva Application Security Platform, and then Imperva Application Security Platform forwards it to my public IP. Therefore, I would classify it as a private cloud.
What was our ROI?
I have the impression that there is a return on investment; we enjoy cleaner traffic in our environment, and more requests are being served, indicating a huge return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing is not transparent to me; it's what the vendors give, or whatever the channel partner offers that you can negotiate on. The setup process is pretty easy, and the vendor is very transparent in terms of support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Prior to choosing Imperva Application Security Platform, I did not evaluate other options in terms of a proof of concept; I only did a feedback assessment on the internet.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Imperva Application Security Platform a nine on a scale of one to ten. I choose a nine because it has not failed me since I've been using it, and I've not had any attack. My advice to others looking into using Imperva Application Security Platform is that it is highly recommended and certainly worth trying out, at least for web application firewall purposes.
Strong policies and bot defenses have secured critical APIs and have reduced attack noise
What is our primary use case?
In a recent project, we had one of our clients, a major financial institution in Eastern Europe. They were trying to resolve some issues with bots having access to some tangible data in their application. They had an external firewall they were using, but it was not backing up whatever alerts that needed to be obtained to make sure things are well secured. We came in and configured Imperva Application Security Platform on the web application. We made sure the DDoS protection feature was activated, so the admin is also alerted to whatever attack is coming in and then they are able to do the right measures to make sure it is stopped.
What is most valuable?
The policy tuning is one of the easiest features that I know. Once you are trying to customize a policy, you just need to understand what kind of policy you are trying to customize, go through the right place from the security to policies, then create a policy. For example, you might be trying to set a policy to make sure that it does not save credit cards on a particular platform or website. That is basically one of the simplest ways of ensuring policy tuning works fine. It is one of the easiest features and I believe it has done a great deal for me in the aspect of operating Imperva Application Security Platform.
What needs improvement?
The main reason it is not a perfect ten is regarding support. At times, having to reach the support team takes eight hours to ten hours maximum. There are times when clients could have urgent issues to attend to. The support team could do more by having a faster response rate.
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
What was our ROI?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Advanced API inspection has protected critical banking integrations and supports real-time analysis
What is our primary use case?
I use Imperva Application Security Platform for API security, which has a cloud solution where normal traffic flows horizontally, and a copy of the traffic goes to the cloud to be inspected. If there is something suspicious, it could be blocked depending on the action configured. Imperva Application Security Platform also has a solution for Database Activity Monitoring (DAM) as well as API security. I have been working with these solutions for around one and a half years, more than one year, as a partner collaborating with the vendor. The communication from the vendor flows through us, then to the clients, particularly the financial institutions and banks.
The data center for the bank is usually the headquarter, where the main data center is located in our country, and there are branches at every street. For the branches, every access is through the firewall and the core banking application server, and there is an integration between banks from different institutions. In this case, every communication is done through the API, necessitating API inspection and API security.
The main benefit is the use case my clients find valuable. For the product and security, there is good API inspection. If any abnormal API appears or there are any similarities due to changes, the API security features will catch that because there is access for third-party applications from one bank to another. This setup ensures there is segmentation, and allowed APIs will get access while others will be blocked. It serves as the main channel for third-party application integration, and without API security, any similar URL related access could affect core banking, which is vital for every financial transaction.
For real-time analysis, the deployment is arranged so as not to interrupt transactions. The normal traffic flow will continue, while a copy of the API traffic will be mirrored to Imperva Application Security Platform for deep inspection. If any abnormalities are detected, even unusual behaviors for transactions, checks are done continuously, and actions are sent accordingly if any suspicious traffic is found.
What is most valuable?
For the fast response of signature-based comparisons, traffic will be matched against the solutions stored in the database to release actions if similarities occur. However, the main drawback for signature-based approaches happens when there is a new zero-day attack that is not in the database. Solutions usually include integrity with lab environments so that zero-day attack signatures are sent through subscriptions to provide the latest updates.
The comparison for API protection varies across solutions. For F5, API protection is part of WAF, and similarly for Fortinet. While Imperva Application Security Platform has basic features as part of WAF, its dedicated API protection solution is a strong point.
What needs improvement?
On the negative side, API security mainly supports cloud-based solutions, while most of my customers prefer on-prem setups, so achieving high performance with on-prem solutions would be beneficial. The attractiveness of Imperva Application Security Platform is that not all data is exposed to the cloud. Only a mirrored copy goes to the cloud and is inspected, allowing actions to be taken on-prem. To convince my clients, a purely on-prem solution would be ideal since they are financial institutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for more than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I am more than happy with the technical support from Imperva Application Security Platform regarding data security and API security. For the support, however, one notable drawback is that, unlike Fortinet, which offers fast track labs and continuous enablement, Imperva Application Security Platform lacks lab access and fast track labs for enablement and product advertising. This weakness has shifted the marketplace toward other vendors. When creating a ticket for support during deployment, the response is satisfactory, though the gaps in enablement and lab sessions are clear.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I find Imperva Application Security Platform to be a scalable product, as long as I subscribe and pay for the application I wish to use. It is scalable, and for about one and a half years, I have experienced no challenges in this area. I have not even needed support after deployment, since it has remained stable.
How are customer service and support?
When creating a ticket for support during deployment, the response is satisfactory, though the gaps in enablement and lab sessions are clear. Overall, I would rate support around an eight or nine, and my overall experience with security products spans around four years, with my particular engagement with Imperva Application Security Platform mainly during project deployment and client training.
How was the initial setup?
For installation, it primarily involves a cloud-based service, and I was using that as an operator. For database activity monitoring, I have deployed it, and while it is somewhat complex, there is a support channel where I communicate with vendors to resolve issues. The main challenge during installation is not unique to Imperva Application Security Platform. It is faced by many on-prem and virtual appliance products, particularly ensuring integrity with the virtualization environment and integration with third-party applications.
What other advice do I have?
I am not using CyberArk, as it is only a proposal for identity and access management that I have proposed for my clients.
Apart from One Identity, I am working with SentinelOne for AI, and I was looking for that. For Purple AI, I was communicating with the vendors and the distributor, and I have considered proposing it for my clients. Currently, I am using the load balancer Radware as an application load balancer. For the on-prem WAF, I am using Fortinet, regarding the WAF and the load balancer, Radware and Fortinet.
I am not working with some email security products, some EDR, or endpoint protection as an implementation. I was just looking into it and have proposed it for my clients, and I am waiting for the financial evaluation for FortiMail. For Fortinet, I am involved more with FortiMail, WAF, ADC, FortiGate firewall, NAC, WAF, and FortiClient EMS.
Regarding Check Point and WatchGuard, I have worked with Check Point for the firewall, specifically the perimeter firewall. For Check Point, I have already worked with the firewall only, which is a next-generation firewall, using a physical appliance on-prem. Most of my customers, particularly financial institutions, even if they invest their resources in the cloud, need an on-prem solution. It could be a virtual appliance deployed on a server or a physical appliance, but they mostly need on-prem.
Regarding the price, I find Imperva Application Security Platform affordable, with moderate pricing. My overall rating for this solution is eight out of ten.
Advanced threat detection has improved real-time traffic protection and mitigates DDoS attacks
What is our primary use case?
Clients can use Imperva Application Security Platform for various purposes, and as a reseller, I believe the best advantage in the product is its features that stand out for the client.
What is most valuable?
I have experience with the real-time traffic inspection feature of Imperva Application Security Platform, and it helps with network security.
I believe the reputational analysis in Imperva Application Security Platform is effective for blocking security threats before impact. I also believe that behavioral and signature-based techniques help to improve threat detection accuracy.
I see valuable benefits from advanced detection and traffic profiling during DDoS attacks, and I track some metrics related to DDoS protection performance.
What needs improvement?
I see some areas for improvement in Imperva Application Security Platform, especially regarding price. Regarding return on investment, ROI, I can say it is noticeable with Imperva Application Security Platform, and I see some significant differences compared to other firewalls such as Palo Alto, where there are pros and cons between Imperva Application Security Platform and some competitors.
As for the deployment of Imperva Application Security Platform, I would say it can be a complex process, and I ask this because we are partners with AWS. I have not purchased a solution from AWS Marketplace or deployed it on AWS Cloud for a client.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working and selling it for three years so far.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding the scalability of Imperva Application Security Platform, I would say it is a scalable product with some limitations, but it is also a stable product without much glitch or downtime.
How are customer service and support?
My experience with technical support from Imperva Application Security Platform was good when I reached out to them.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have been in this domain with firewalls longer than three years, overall in this sphere with firewalls and security solutions.
What was our ROI?
I see some areas for improvement in Imperva Application Security Platform, especially regarding price. Regarding return on investment, ROI, I can say it is noticeable with Imperva Application Security Platform, and I see some significant differences compared to other firewalls such as Palo Alto, where there are pros and cons between Imperva Application Security Platform and some competitors.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Have noticed several areas that need improvement while some features are helpful during deployment
What is our primary use case?
I prefer not to do a review for EDR since it is a new product that I am using. Instead, I would like to review other products I have worked with before, such as Imperva products, Imperva Web Application Firewall, or Imperva DAM.
What is most valuable?
I worked as a consultant for the customer and was part of a design and deployment team for Imperva API Security.
What needs improvement?
Could you please describe the deployment process, initial setup process, and what challenges were faced?
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I would need to check with my manager and run this by the legal team in the US before I would be able to share this information.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Please repeat the question.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
That would be fine.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support team would be rated 5 out of 10, where 10 represents the best support and 1 represents very poor support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I would prefer to receive the form via email so I can fill it out manually myself. Additionally, I want this review to be anonymous, with neither my name nor my company's name appearing anywhere.
How was the initial setup?
We can schedule a call in two hours to discuss this further.
What about the implementation team?
Please describe the deployment process, initial setup process, and what challenges were faced.
What other advice do I have?
I would need to check with my manager and run this by the legal team in the US before sharing more information. We can schedule a call in two hours to discuss this further.
Good solution but poor support in my region
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
What is our primary use case?
Usually, I work with web DDoS Protection on the website.
DDoS protection of web requests on the website is the most common use case.
Companies that are working through the site, selling through the site, and so forth.
The most valuable feature of Imperva DDoS is to make our website available for our customers' requests 24 hours a day. This feature may be the most interesting for the financial sector, for banks.
What is most valuable?
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website.
I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests.
Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level.
The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level could be combined into a big denial of service. Maybe Imperva DDoS could use endpoints to get information about the attacks before they commence from the endpoint level or establish cooperation with endpoint vendors to share this information.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Imperva DDoS for about 7 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of Imperva DDoS is very good, as it seems they have a lot of servers around the world.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Imperva DDoS is very easy to manage. 99% of customers are using the cloud version of Imperva DDoS protection, so they just purchase the new license and scale as needed.
A popular use case for scalability challenges is when customers want to move from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud, having a transmission period where they use both a copy of infrastructure in the cloud and the current infrastructure in the on-premise offices. This means they need to use double capabilities to protect both connections to the cloud and to the on-premise part of the whole infrastructure. During this period, customers can buy a subscription with double the scale of the needed throughput of protection.
How are customer service and support?
I have interacted with the technical support of Imperva DDoS, and it is very easy. They are very professional, and communication goes through the technical support site. It's quite easy to register a support case and track the solution of your support ticket.
I would rate the technical support of Imperva DDoS as ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Imperva DDoS, I used a different solution that was Unix-based and not commercial versions of products.
I switched from the previous solution to Imperva DDoS because we started to integrate the products, and we saw that the capabilities were much greater than what we used to have. We also had a technical engineer on board who can manage these solutions easily and has a deep understanding of what is happening with our websites during attacks.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup and deployment of Imperva DDoS was quite easy. Customers just needed to provide the public IP address or the public name of their site, and we gave this information to Imperva DDoS to protect those sites. After the system is working, our technical engineer usually connects to configure some threat protection, role-based access control capabilities, reporting, and other minor configurations.
What about the implementation team?
I work as an integrator.
What was our ROI?
I have calculated return on investment with Imperva DDoS, particularly in the financial sector with bank accounts, where the calculation is straightforward. Banks usually calculate their loss when they are not working. They know how much money they are losing while the system is down, so by increasing the possibility of not having a down website or web application, return on investment can be calculated easily.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided.
I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap and ten is very expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated other options and vendors before choosing Imperva DDoS. We considered Akamai, but it was too expensive for us.
What other advice do I have?
I don't remember the last version of Imperva DDoS I am currently working with.
When customers change their DDoS protection to Imperva DDoS or integrate Imperva DDoS as a new single DDoS protection product, they achieve full satisfaction with international standards like PCI DSS and GDPR. This is a seamless integration with international standards.
I don't see any improvements needed for Imperva DDoS, because it is a very niche product with niche capabilities. It's not a technical thing, because it is continuously approved. Some features appear, but it's more about small improvements. The attacks Imperva DDoS is constructed to protect against are very well-known, and the solution is effective in protecting against them. The system can protect against even zero-day attacks.
We get Imperva DDoS free as part of an MSSP approach, but for our customers, the average deal size for one year could be around 10,000 dollars.
On a scale from one to ten, I rate Imperva DDoS a nine.