WAP — Context-driven security for modern applications
Web applications and APIs form the foundation of modern digital ecosystems, enabling everything from financial transactions to real-time communications. However, APIs now account for most internet traffic, making them a primary attack target. Traditional Web Application Protection (WAPs), built for a web-first world, struggle to protect APIs—leading to missed threats, operational noise, and excessive false positives.
Traceable WAP acts as a security enforcement layer, analyzing and filtering incoming traffic before it reaches your origin. It protects applications from API threats, bot attacks, malicious requests, and DDoS attacks while ensuring seamless traffic routing and policy enforcement.
Why traditional WAPs fall short
Legacy WAPs rely on static rules and signatures, treating all traffic uniformly. This approach fails to distinguish legitimate API behavior from malicious attacks, resulting in:
Missed API-based threats that don’t match predefined rules.
False positives, blocking legitimate traffic, and disrupting operations.
Limited visibility makes tracking API usage trends and emerging attack patterns difficult.
Context-driven protection with API DNA
A modern WAP solution must go beyond static filtering by embedding deep API awareness and behavioral intelligence into its security model.
API DNA Mapping — Automatically discovers and maps all API endpoints, tracks data flows such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and financial transactions, and establishes normal patterns of API usage.
Smart Decision Engine — This engine evaluates security events based on each API's established “DNA,” distinguishing expected behavior from anomalies.
Example: An SQL query in a healthcare API might be normal, but the same query in a read-only API could indicate an attack. WAP solutions that understand API intent can differentiate these nuances, reducing false positives while blocking real threats.
Behavioral baselines: Learning and adapting to API usage
Traditional WAPs use fixed-rate thresholds (for example, “block if >100 requests/minute”), which often result in unnecessary alerts. A WAP solution with behavioral intelligence:
Learns Normal API Behavior — Establishes a baseline for typical API activity, ensuring unusual traffic patterns stand out.
Detects Anomalies Dynamically — Rather than just measuring traffic volume, WAP solutions analyze deviations in API behavior.
Monitors API and Actor Trends — Tracks how individual users and systems interact with APIs. The system detects and flags the anomaly if an actor suddenly deviates from normal usage patterns.
Operational clarity: Confidence-scored threat detection
Security is not just about blocking threats — it’s about ensuring accuracy and reducing alert fatigue. WAP solutions must provide multi-dimensional threat analysis, integrating:
API Parameter Learning — Identifies unexpected inputs that could indicate an attack.
Actor and API Trend Monitoring — Tracks behavior shifts across multiple APIs, detecting deviations before they become incidents.
Confidence-Scored Security Events — Rather than flooding teams with alerts, WAP solutions assign risk levels based on comprehensive analysis, ensuring security teams act only on high-confidence threats.
Traceable managed Edge Deployment
The Edge Deployment option for the Traceable WAP solution eliminates the need for you to maintain or manage agents. Instead, you can seamlessly direct traffic to the Traceable platform through one of the following methods:
Direct Traffic Routing: Customers can implement a simple DNS change to redirect traffic directly from their tenant to the Traceable platform.
CDN Integration: If the customer is using a CDN, they can modify their CDN configuration to designate Traceable as the origin, ensuring that traffic is routed through the platform.
For more information, see Edge instrumentation.
Ensuring secure and reliable digital services
A WAP solution must be API-aware, behavior-driven, and adaptable to evolving threats to protect modern applications. By embedding API intelligence, learning usage patterns, and delivering confidence-scored security insights, WAP provides precise, effective protection without compromising performance or user experience.