Sense Defence’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) offers both security and acceleration at the web application level.

To begin the process of securing and speeding up a web application, a “site” must be added to a Sense Defence customer organisation. This organisation could represent a single application or a collection of applications that are managed collectively, sharing the same dashboards and configuration settings.

The WAF services of Sense Defence utilise Global acceleration technology. This technology ensures the quickest available internet route to the origin server, providing protection against malicious attacks. Sense Defence maintains CNAME records and A records, which are used to direct traffic to the Sense Defence network and implement its security algorithms.

Sense Defence supports the use of the standard HTTP/S ports:

HTTP (80/TCP)

HTTPS (443/TCP)  

Add Web application to Sense Defence

1. Log in to the Sense Defence dashboard and navigate to ‘Applications’. Click on the ‘Add Website’ button.

2. Enter the website domain name without ‘www’. Sense Defence provides the ‘www’ subdomain by default, so there’s no need to configure it separately. Provide the actual origin IP address where the clean requests need to be sent. 
   
   

   Sense Defence will perform a health check of the website and origin server before accepting the registration. Ensure that the domain is active and the origin server is reachable before adding the site to Sense Defence.

3. Enter the FQDN (or enter subdomain if you are onboarding a subdomain only) and backend IP address. Click on ‘Add Website’. You should see a ‘Success’ message. Click on ‘Continue’.

4. At this step, you will be configuring SSL settings for your web applications. Select the appropriate settings. Refer to the SSL configuration Guide for more information.

5. If you want to enable “Adaptive, Adaptive E2E or Advanced E2E” mode, ensure you have generated/uploaded an SSL certificate before continuing.
   

6. To install SSL certificate, you will have the option to Generate SSL certificate (Free) or Upload SSL certificate (your own).

7. Update the provided DNS entries in your domain registrars and click on ‘Verify Domains’. Sense Defence will automatically generate the SSL once the domain entries are validated successfully.

8. Once the SSL generation window is closed, click on ‘Continue’.

9. On this screen, you can enable WAF configurations according to your current plan. Click on ‘Continue’.

10. Review the configurations on the next screen and click on ‘Submit’. 
    
    

    The SSL certificate may show as Red in the review screen as the installation has not begun yet. Click on ‘Submit’ to begin site configurations.

11. Sense Defence will deploy all configurations as per your earlier instructions. Click on ‘Continue’ after all steps are completed.

12. Update the DNS records as shown on the screen and click on ‘Finish’. 

13. It is recommended to configure a CNAME record “edge.sensedefence.net” on web applications if possible.

14. Once you’ve updated your DNS records, click on ‘Finish’. A confirmation message will be displayed.

15. Finally, click on ‘View Websites’ to see your newly added site.
    

By Default Sense Dfence WAF will be in audit-only mode. This means WAF will be able to detect the attacks but will not block them until settings are changed to enforced.

Configure WAF Enforcement Mode

After making changes to your configurations, it typically takes about 30 seconds for the changes to propagate across all the edge gateways. This ensures that your updated settings are applied consistently across the network.