Cisco Cyber Security Practice Exam

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is specifically designed to protect web applications from a variety of attacks, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and other vulnerabilities that can be exploited via HTTP/HTTPS traffic. Unlike traditional firewalls that primarily focus on filtering and controlling network traffic based on predetermined rules, a WAF operates at the application layer and can analyze the content of the web traffic to identify and block malicious requests targeted at web applications.

WAFs employ various techniques to safeguard web applications, including inspecting incoming requests, enforcing security policies, and being able to differentiate between legitimate user behavior and potentially harmful actions. This makes them an essential component in a comprehensive security strategy for any organization that utilizes web applications, particularly in the face of increasing cyber threats.

The other options, while serving important functions in network security, do not specifically address the needs of web applications in the same manner a WAF does. Stateful and stateless firewalls primarily focus on the transport layer and manage traffic flow based on established connections or static rules. Next-generation firewalls (NGFW) offer additional features such as intrusion prevention and application awareness, but they do not provide the specialized layer of protection that a WAF uniquely offers for web applications.