Startup launching web application firewall service

Imperva Monday announced its spinoff company Incapsula will start providing cloud-based Web application firewall services early next year with a focus on smaller businesses.

Incapsula is an Israeli-based start-up with about 15 employees and three data centers located in Israel, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to Mark Kraynak, vice president of worldwide marketing. Beta testing is in full swing, he says.

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Web application firewalls are designed to protect Web sites against a variety of attacks that include Cross Site Scripting and SQL Injection, which can lead to an attack compromising a server and gaining further access into an internal network.

Incapsula’s way of providing that security as a service requires the customer to "change the DNS entry and point it to Incapsula," says Kraynak. The customer traffic then passes first through Incapsula, where the Web firewall service would block any Web application attacks, and then is passed along to the customer. Since this process could potentially slow traffic down, Incapsula also intends to offer site acceleration services to reduce any impact.

The starting cost for the Incapsula Web application firewall service is expected to be about $50 per month.

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