How to Configure WAF Protection

This topic walks you through how to configure WAF protection policies, how WAF engine works, and protection rule priorities.

Process of Configuring Policies

After your website is connected to WAF, you need to configure a protection policy for it.

**Table 1** Configurable protection rules
Protection Rule	Description	Reference
Basic web protection rules	With an extensive reputation database, WAF defends against Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10 threats, and detects and blocks threats, such as malicious scanners, IP addresses, and web shells.	Configuring Basic Protection Rules to Defend Against Common Web Attacks
CC attack protection rules	CC attack protection rules can be customized to restrict access to a specific URL on your website based on a unique IP address, cookie, or referer field, mitigating CC attacks.	Configuring a CC Attack Protection Rule
Precise protection rules	You can customize protection rules by combining HTTP headers, cookies, URLs, request parameters, and client IP addresses.	Configuring Custom Precise Protection Rules
Blacklist and whitelist rules	You can configure blacklist and whitelist rules to block, log only, or allow access requests from specified IP addresses.	Configuring IP Address Blacklist and Whitelist Rules to Block or Allow Specified IP Addresses
Geolocation access control rules	You can customize these rules to allow or block requests from a specific country or region.	Configuring Geolocation Access Control Rules to Block or Allow Requests from Specific Locations
Web tamper protection rules	You can configure these rules to prevent a static web page from being tampered with.	Configuring Web Tamper Protection Rules to Prevent Static Web Pages from Being Tampered With
Website anti-crawler protection	This function dynamically analyzes website service models and accurately identifies crawler behavior based on data risk control and bot identification systems, such as JS Challenge.	Configuring Anti-Crawler Rules
Information leakage prevention rules	You can add two types of information leakage prevention rules. Sensitive information filtering: prevents disclosure of sensitive information (such as ID numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses). Response code interception: blocks the specified HTTP status codes.	Configuring Information Leakage Prevention Rules to Protect Sensitive Information from Leakage
Global protection whitelist rules	You can configure these rules to let WAF ignore certain rules for specific requests.	Configuring a Global Protection Whitelist Rule to Ignore False Alarms
Data masking rules	You can configure data masking rules to prevent sensitive data such as passwords from being displayed in event logs.	Configuring Data Masking Rules to Prevent Privacy Information Leakage

WAF Rule Priorities

The built-in protection rules of WAF help you defend against common web application attacks, including XSS attacks, SQL injection, crawlers, and web shells. You can customize protection rules to let WAF better protect your website services using these custom rules. Figure 1 shows how WAF engine built-in protection rules work. Figure 2 shows the detection sequence of rules you configured.

Figure 1 WAF engine work process
Click to enlarge

Figure 2 Priorities of protection rules

Response actions

Pass: The current request is unconditionally permitted after a protection rule is matched.
Block: The current request is blocked after a rule is matched.
CAPTCHA: The system will perform human-machine verification after a rule is matched.
Redirect: The system will notify you to redirect the request after a rule is matched.
Log: Only attack information is recorded after a rule is matched.
Mask: The system will anonymize sensitive information after a rule is matched.

Parent topic: Policies

Previous topic: Policies

Next topic: Configuring Basic Protection Rules to Defend Against Common Web Attacks