Azure WAF frontdoor vs Azure WAF application gateway - Microsoft Q&A (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between Azure Application Gateway WAF and Azure front door WAF? ›

Azure Front Door and Azure Application Gateway are both load balancers for HTTP/HTTPS traffic, but they have different scopes. Front Door is a global service that can distribute requests across regions, while Application Gateway is a regional service that can balance requests within a region.

Azure Front Door helps load balance traffic across regions. Application Gateway routes and load-balances traffic internally in the application to the various services that satisfy client business needs. A multiregion N-tier application that uses Traffic Manager to route incoming requests to a primary region.

There are two options when applying WAF policies in Azure. WAF with Azure Front Door is a globally distributed, edge security solution. WAF with Application Gateway is a regional, dedicated solution. We recommend you choose a solution based on your overall performance and security requirements.

Azure Application Gateway and Web Application Firewall (WAF) V2 now offer additional features such as autoscaling, availability, zone redundancy, higher performance, faster operations and improved throughput compared to V1.

Azure Front Door helps provide fast, secure, and scalable access to web applications. It also helps protect cloud-based apps and provides high-bandwidth content.

The web application firewall (WAF) marketplace is diverse, with various deployment options based on an organization's application and security requirements. There are three primary types of WAFs: a cloud-based WAF, software-based WAF, and hardware-based WAF. Each type of WAF has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Firewall and Application Gateway in parallel

Azure WAF in Azure Application Gateway protects inbound traffic to the web workloads, and the Azure Firewall inspects inbound traffic for the other applications. The Azure Firewall will cover outbound flows from both workload types.

Application Gateway is integrated with several Azure services. Azure Traffic Manager supports multiple-region redirection, automatic failover, and zero-downtime maintenance. Use Azure Virtual Machines, virtual machine scale sets, or the Web Apps feature of Azure App Service in your back-end pools.

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic (OSI layer 7) load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.

WAFs are crucial to any. By integrating API gateways and WAFs, the gateway efficiently handles traffic, while the WAF focuses on securing against potential threats, creating a comprehensive solution for API management and security.

What is Application Gateway WAF? ›

The Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) on Azure Application Gateway actively safeguards your web applications against common exploits and vulnerabilities.

Both services offer different security features depending on your use case. The Front Door handles DDOS protection and WAF for security. On the other hand, the Application Gateway provides Centralized Authentication and protects your app against DDOS attacks, Cross-Site Scripting, and SQL Injection.

Azure Application gateway V2 has a maximum file upload limit of 4 GB for both Standard and WAF SKU (when you are using the new WAF engine with CRS 3.2 or newer). So, it doesn't matter if you are using WAF or not, the maximum limit for file upload remains at 4 GB as of today.

Choosing an Application or Network Firewall

However, a WAF cannot protect from attacks at the network layer, so it should supplement a network firewall rather than replace it.

Front Door is also a Content Delivery Network (CDN) platform designed for global traffic management and acceleration while Application Gateway is primarily focused on application-level routing and load balancing within a specific region or virtual network.

In simpler language: the API gateway provides basic access point control to the API endpoint, ensuring that those accessing it are likely to be legitimate and/or accredited users. WAFs, by contrast, are more security-oriented, adding an additional layer of protection.

WAF is a feature of the Application Gateway that provides centralized protection for your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. WAF is based on rules from the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) core rule sets 3.0 or 2.2.

Microsoft Azure presents two services, Azure Front Door which is a cloud-based service that delivers a scalable and safe entry point for the applications, and Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network) which is a service that allows enterprises to deliver content to users fast and efficiently.