WAAP
What is WAAP?
WAAPWAAP (Web Application and API Protection) is the modern evolution of WAF, adding API security, bot management, and DDoS protection into a unified cloud service.
Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) is the category that Gartner uses to describe cloud services that combine the four pillars of application-edge security: a web application firewall, API protection, bot management, and DDoS mitigation. Compared to a traditional WAF, a WAAP understands modern app architectures (JSON, GraphQL, microservices, mobile clients) and treats APIs as first-class assets — discovering them, validating schemas, and detecting abuse. WAAPs are usually delivered by CDN/edge providers (Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS, Fastly, Imperva), so policies execute close to users with low latency. They are central to protecting public APIs and SPAs against OWASP Top 10, OWASP API Top 10, and automated attacks.
● Examples
- 01
A WAAP discovers a forgotten internal API and applies schema validation to block parameter abuse.
- 02
Throttling and bot-managing a credential-stuffing wave against a customer login API.
● Frequently asked questions
What is WAAP?
WAAP (Web Application and API Protection) is the modern evolution of WAF, adding API security, bot management, and DDoS protection into a unified cloud service. It belongs to the Network Security category of cybersecurity.
What does WAAP mean?
WAAP (Web Application and API Protection) is the modern evolution of WAF, adding API security, bot management, and DDoS protection into a unified cloud service.
How does WAAP work?
Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) is the category that Gartner uses to describe cloud services that combine the four pillars of application-edge security: a web application firewall, API protection, bot management, and DDoS mitigation. Compared to a traditional WAF, a WAAP understands modern app architectures (JSON, GraphQL, microservices, mobile clients) and treats APIs as first-class assets — discovering them, validating schemas, and detecting abuse. WAAPs are usually delivered by CDN/edge providers (Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS, Fastly, Imperva), so policies execute close to users with low latency. They are central to protecting public APIs and SPAs against OWASP Top 10, OWASP API Top 10, and automated attacks.
How do you defend against WAAP?
Defences for WAAP typically combine technical controls and operational practices, as detailed in the full definition above.
What are other names for WAAP?
Common alternative names include: Web Application and API Protection, Cloud WAF/WAAP.
● Related terms
- network-security№ 291
DDoS Mitigation
DDoS mitigation is the set of techniques and services that absorb, filter, and re-route distributed denial-of-service attacks before they exhaust a target's network, infrastructure, or application capacity.
- network-security№ 904
Rate Limiting
Rate limiting caps the number of requests an identifier (IP, user, API key, or token) may make over a time window, protecting APIs and apps from abuse, scraping, and brute-force.
- network-security№ 118
Bot Management
Bot management is the practice of detecting automated traffic and distinguishing good bots from malicious ones, then allowing, challenging, or blocking each accordingly.
- network-security№ 151
CDN Security
CDN security uses the global edge of a content delivery network — terminating TLS close to users — to enforce DDoS protection, WAF, bot management, and TLS hygiene.
- appsec№ 052
API Security
The discipline of designing, building and operating application programming interfaces so that authentication, authorization, data exposure and abuse-resistance hold up under attack.
- compliance№ 781
OWASP Top 10
An OWASP awareness document that lists the most critical security risks to web applications, updated periodically from real-world vulnerability data.
● See also
- № 969SASE