Barracuda Networks Web Application Controller NC500 AG
Powerful, application-layer security protection for Web servers.

Barracuda Web Application Controller NC500 AG Overview:

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall is a complete and powerful security solution for Web applications and Web sites. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides award-winning protection against hackers leveraging protocol or application vulnerabilities to instigate data theft, denial of service or defacement of your Web site. Barracuda Web Site Firewall

• Protection against common attacks
• Outbound data theft protection
• Web site cloaking
• Granular policies
• Secure HTTP traffic
• SSL Offloading
• SSL Acceleration
• Load Balancing

Powerful, Complete Solution

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall protects Web applications and Web services from malicious attacks, and can also increase the performance and scalability of these applications. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall offers every capability needed to deliver, secure and manage enterprise Web applications from a single appliance through an intuitive, real-time user interface.

• Single point of protection for inbound and outbound traffic for all Web applications
• Protects Web sites and Web applications against application layer attacks
• Delivers best practices security right out of the box
• Monitors traffic and provides reports about attackers and attack attempts

Click to enlarge

Comprehensive Web Site Protection

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides award-winning protection from all common attacks on Web applications, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting attacks, session tampering and buffer overflows.

Many applications are vulnerable to such attacks because application developers do not consistently employ secure coding practices. Barracuda Web Site Firewall is designed to combat all attack types that have been categorized as significant threats, including:

• Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
• SQL injection flaws
• OS command injections
• Site reconnaissance
• Session hijacking
• Application denial of service
• Malicious probes/crawlers
• Cookie/session tampering
• Path traversal
• Information leakage

A Single Solution to a Multifaceted Problem

Online Web-based applications are increasingly at risk from professional hackers who target such applications in order to commit data theft or fraud. Being compromised can damage an enterprise’s reputation, result in loss of customers and impact the organization’s bottom line.

In addition, companies that transact online are faced with a host of growing industry regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which mandates that all enterprise and Web applications handling credit card and account information must undergo an extensive and costly audit of custom application code. The alternative to satisfy PCI DSS compliance is simply installing a Web application firewall.

The combination of these factors along with banking industry PCI DSS compliance concerns, creates demand for a more technologically and cost-effective risk protection solution for online Web applications.

Backed by the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall will continue to dominate the market by breaking technology barriers.

Features:

Traditionally, security has been considered a network issue, where system administrators lock down host computers through a network firewall. While a typical network firewall can help restrict traffic to HTTP and HTTPS, this traffic can contain command exploits leveraging vulnerabilities in the Web application itself that can result in data leakage, site defacement and other attacks by hackers that compromise both the privacy and integrity of vital data. Businesses of all sizes that operate their own Web applications should ensure that their Web sites are protected against application vulnerabilities.

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides complete protection of Web applications and is designed to enforce policies for both internal and external data security standards, such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). At the same time the Barracuda Web Site Firewall 460 and higher models feature a comprehensive set of application delivery capabilities designed to improve the performance, scalability and manageability of today’s most demanding data center infrastructures.

Comprehensive Web Site Protection

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall proxies all of your Web site traffic, providing complete protection in front of your Web sites. Capabilities include:

• HTTP protocol compliance. At a basic level, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall verifies that all inbound requests comply with the HTTP specification. For example, inbound requests with more than one Content-Length header are typically the basis of HTTP request smuggling attacks; therefore they are illegal according to the HTTP specification and are blocked automatically.
• Protection against common, high-visibility attacks. Hackers can take advantage of vulnerabilities in your online Web forms to attack your applications. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall protects your Web applications against SQL injections, OS command injections and cross-site scripting attacks.
• Protection against attacks based on session state. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall protects your Web applications against any attacks based on session state, such as forms tampering or cookie tampering.
• Outbound data theft protection. In addition to inspecting the request traffic, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall also inspects all outbound packets for any data pattern expressible as a UNIX-style regular expression. Built-in policies protect all major credit cards and U.S. Social Security number patterns and new data patterns can be added at any time. Inspection for outbound leakage of these patterns can be applied to security policy on-the-fly.
• Web site cloaking. To prevent hackers from doing reconnaissance on your Web infrastructure, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall automatically strips identifying banners of Web server software and version numbers out of all transactions.
• Anti-crawling. While some Web crawlers, such as search engines are often desirable, you may wish to prevent all other users from downloading your entire site. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall can easily identify and allow legitimate crawlers while blocking more malicious ones.
• Fine-grained control. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall features automatic fine-grain rules creation based on both HTTP requests and responses down to the level of individual HTML elements.
• Application denial of service (DoS) protection. By validating input limits for online form fields, Web applications and sites are protected against the SQL injections, OS command injections or form field-based attacks. Fine-grain control on all points prevents hackers from instigating these common attacks.

Application Access Control

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall implements a single point for policy enforcement and control, which includes authentication to ensure that users are known, access control policy for resources and protection against data leakage. Capabilities include:

• PKI support. By providing a full PKI infrastructure, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall can act as a Certificate Authority, including participating in a certificate trust chain.
• Cookie tampering. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall fully terminates and proxies every connection to insulate each unique user session from exposure and can stamp or encrypt the session cookies. Also included to prevent cookie tampering is the ability to ensure that all hidden or read-only form fields are not changed by the user.

Application Delivery and Acceleration

In addition to the comprehensive security benefits of the Barracuda Web Site Firewall, there are also additional operational capabilities available in the Barracuda Web Site Firewall. Capabilities include:

• SSL offloading. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall includes SSL offloading, streamlining the encryption and decryption of SSL traffic to quickly process secure online transactions without additional burden on any servers.
• SSL acceleration. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall includes hardware-based SSL acceleration, offloading back-end servers from the computational burdens of encrypting and decrypting secure Web traffic.
• Load balancing. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall includes integrated load balancing capabilities to distribute traffic among multiple back-end servers. It supports both Layer 4 and Layer 7 cookie persistence and includes support for Layer 7 content switching based on URL pattern, parameter or HTTP header fields.
• High Availability. When inline in Bridge-path, the Ethernet Hard Bypass ensures reliable application delivery even with a single Barracuda Web Site Firewall. For Web applications with stringent security requirements, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall may be installed in a redundant pair configuration, providing real-time application state replication so that security and user sessions will not be compromised during a failover event.

Logging, Monitoring and Reporting

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall features advanced capabilities to provide immediate feedback to the operations team that deploy, manage and secure mission critical applications. Capabilities include:

• Comprehensive logging. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall maintains a rich set of logs on the appliance, including system activity, Web Firewall activity, Web services activity, network firewall activity and traditional Web logs.
• PCI reports. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides an easy-to-read snapshot of common application attacks, critical for securing credit card important and providing compliance to PCI DSS requirements.
• Syslog support. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall forwards logs to a syslog server for centralized and persistent storage or analysis by a third party tool.

PCI DSS Compliance:

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall and Barracuda Web Application Controller assist organizations of all types that store, process and/or transmit credit card numbers, comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements. In response to increased identity theft incidents and security breaches, major credit card companies collaborated in Sept. 2006 to create the 12 procedural and system requirements, commonly known as PCI DSS version 1.1, to standardize how to store and access Primary Account Number (PAN) information.

Most immediate for today’s merchants and organizations is Section 6.6 of the PCI DSS compliance deadline on June 30, 2008, addressing the development and maintenance of secure systems and applications. Section 6.6 mandates all enterprise and Web applications handling credit card and account information must undergo an extensive audit of all custom application code that can be time consuming, labor intensive and a costly process to visit and revisit with each change to the application code. The alternative to satisfy PCI DSS Section 6.6 compliance is simply installing a Web application firewall.

 

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Requirements

The 12 PCI DSS requirements are organized into 6 main categories. To be fully compliant, an organization must satisfy all 12 requirements.

• Maintain a Secure Network: Requirements 1 and 2
  • Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
  • Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
• Protect Cardholder Data: Requirements 3 and 4
  • Protect stored cardholder data
  • Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks
• Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program: Requirements 5 and 6
  • Use and regularly update anti-virus software
  • Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
• Implement Strong Access Controls: Requirements 7, 8, and 9
  • Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
  • Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
  • Restrict physical access to cardholder data
• Regularly Monitor and Test Networks: Requirements 10 and 11
  • Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
  • Regularly test security systems and processes
• Maintain an Information Security Policy: Requirement 12
  • Maintain a policy that addresses information security

Source: PCI Security Standards version 1.1 - http://www.PCISecurityStandards.org.
 

Barracuda Networks Enables PCI DSS Compliance

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall and Barracuda Web Application Controller are designed as easy and cost-effective solutions to achieve PCI DSS compliance. In addition to satisfying the time-sensitive need to install a Web application firewall into your network for PCI DSS Section 6.6 compliance, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall further ensures PCI DSS compliance with a host of other advanced technologies.

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall enables PCI DSS compliance across major requirements:

PCI DSS section 6.5 is perhaps the most significant set of detailed requirements as it addresses application vulnerability, including coding guidelines, such as those outlined by Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). The Barracuda Web Site Firewall directly addresses each of the requirements in section 6.5.

Model Comparison:

There are three models of the Barracuda Web Site Firewall that handle up to 100 Mbps of throughput, while on the higher end of the product line, the Barracuda Web Application Controllers handle up to 1 Gbps. These specifications are not limits of each system, rather recommended capacity for a single unit.

*Capacity depends on environment and selected options.

Deployment and Administration:

Deployment:

Standard Deployment Configuration

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall is designed to easily fit into any existing data center environment and to rapidly secure and accelerate new and existing Web applications. Barracuda Networks offers the most flexible array of Barracuda Web Site Firewall deployment options, including both Bridge-path and Route-path.

Bridge-path

Bridge-path, the recommended mode of implementation for most customers with existing Web application traffic, enables simple and fast deployment without requiring any IP address changes on either the front- or back-end Web servers or network devices. The bridge is transparent, so no user traffic is disrupted.

Route-path

Route-path provides the highest degree of protection for a Web application infrastructure by acting as a full reverse proxy for all Web application traffic. As a reverse proxy, Route-path allows only predefined traffic that adheres to security policies. Additionally, the reverse proxy controls the only route to the back-end network, so traffic cannot flow to any server unless specifically forwarded by the proxy. This is the most flexible deployment mode because it facilitates the content-based traffic management functions of the Barracuda Web Site Firewall.

Fault Tolerant Barracuda Web Site Firewall Environment

Some organizations may need only a single Barracuda Web Site Firewall. When inline in Bridge-path mode, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall’s Ethernet Hard Bypass ensures reliable application delivery. For Web applications with stringent security requirements, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall may be installed in a redundant pair configuration, providing real-time application state replication so that security and user sessions will not be compromised during a failover event.

Administration

Configuration and Policy Administration

Configuration of the Barracuda Web Site Firewall is accomplished through a secure Web-based interface, featuring a comprehensive online help system.

Initial application definition is made simple through comprehensive default security policies that also allow the administrator to specify more fine-grain rules. Features such as automatic rule creation from log entries enable administrators to easily maintain security policies even as applications change.

Reporting

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall's administrative tools feature statistical reporting that allow you to visualize both overall Web traffic levels as well as the levels of traffic filtered for either policy or security reasons.

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall basic status page provides a quick snapshot of statistics on common attacks, subscription status, performance statistics, as well as hourly and daily attacks and bandwidth usage.

Screenshots:

The following screenshots illustrate the Web user interface of the Barracuda Web Application Controller.

FAQ:

What does the Barracuda Web Site Firewall do?

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall protects your Web site from attackers leveraging protocol or application vulnerabilities to instigate unauthorized access, data theft, denial of service (DoS), or defacement of your Web site.

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides complete protection of Web applications and is designed to enforce policies for both internal and external data security standards, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). At the same time, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall features a number of traffic management capabilities designed to improve the performance, scalability and manageability of today’s most demanding data center infrastructures.

Why do I need a Web site firewall?

Businesses of all sizes that operate their own Web applications should deploy a powerful Web site firewall to protect their Web sites from application vulnerabilities.

Traditionally, security has been considered a network issue, where system administrators lock down host computers through a network firewall. While a typical network firewall can help restrict traffic to HTTP and HTTPS, this traffic can contain command exploits leveraging vulnerabilities in the Web application itself. Without the Barracuda Web Site Firewall acting as an application firewall, a hacker’s attack can result in unauthorized access, data leakage, site defacement and/or other attacks that compromise both the privacy and integrity of vital data.

What are the major capabilities and benefits of the Barracuda Web Site Firewall?

The major capabilities and benefits of the Barracuda Web Site Firewall include:

Comprehensive Web Site Protection: The Barracuda Web Site Firewall proxies all Web traffic, providing complete protection in front of your Web sites. Web site protection capabilities include: HTTP protocol compliance, protection against common/high-visibility attacks, protection against attacks based on session state, online form field validation, outbound data theft protection, Web site cloaking, anti-Web crawling and application denial of service (DoS) protection, as well as fine-grain controls.

Application Access Control: The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides PKI support to provide certificate verification and prevents cookie tampering to ensure hidden or read-only form fields are not changed by the user.

Application Delivery and Acceleration: In addition to the security and access control benefits of Barracuda Web Site Firewall, there are also additional operational capabilities. Capabilities include SSL offloading, SSL acceleration, load balancing and high availability.

Logging, Monitoring and Reporting: The Barracuda Web Site Firewall features advanced capabilities to provide immediate feedback to operations teams that deploy, manage and secure mission critical applications. Besides a system log, Web firewall log, traditional Web log and audit log, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall also provides specific reports relevant to PCI compliance.

How does the Barracuda Web Site Firewall detect and mitigate threats?

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provide award-winning protection from all common attacks on Web applications, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting attacks, session tampering and buffer overflows. As a full proxy, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides comprehensive inbound and outbound protection. By inspecting request traffic, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall can block inbound attacks and cloak Web sites from hackers, while response traffic inspection prevents sensitive data leakage, such as credit card or Social Security numbers.

In addition, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall secures applications from unauthorized user access a full PKI integration for use with client certificates.

Can the Barracuda Web Site Firewall help my company comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)?

Yes, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall assists organizations that store, process and/or transmit credit card numbers to comply with the Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements.

As major credit card companies are increasing pressure on merchants to comply with the PCI DSS, many e-commerce businesses are seeking solutions to meet requirement 6.6 of PCI DSS calling for either detailed custom application code reviews or installation of a Web Application Firewall by June 30, 2008. Failure to comply with these security standards may result in fines, restrictions or permanent expulsion from card acceptance programs. Through multiple advanced features, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall can help organizations easily become PCI DSS compliant. Click here for additional information.

What logging, monitoring and reporting features are available with the Barracuda Web Site Firewall?

Logging monitoring and reporting capabilities of Barracuda Web Site Firewall include:

Comprehensive logging. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall maintains a rich set of logs on the appliance, including system activity, Web Firewall activity, Web services activity, network firewall activity and traditional Web logs.

PCI reports. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides a quick snapshot of application attacks defined in the PCI DSS Section 6.5, including unvalidated input, broken access control, cross-site scripting and so on.

Syslog support. The Barracuda Web Site Firewall forwards logs to a syslog server for centralized and persistent storage or analysis by a third party tool.

Will the Barracuda Web Site Firewall fit into my existing network environment?

Yes, the Barracuda Web Site Firewall is designed to easily fit into any existing data center environment and to rapidly secure and accelerate new and existing Web applications. Barracuda Networks offers the most flexible array of Barracuda Web Site Firewall deployment options, including both Bridge-path and Route-path.

How do I know which Barracuda Web Site Firewall model is best suited to my needs?

 A regional Barracuda Networks sales representative can evaluate your network environment and Web usage needs to help determine which model(s) is the best fit for your company.

What if I have more questions or want to see an online demo of the Web Site Firewall?

For answers to additional questions, please contact us.

Documentation::