Alibaba Cloud WAF vs Blackwall

Alibaba Cloud WAF

Model: Pay-as-you-go (SeCU) or Subscription

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Blackwall

Model: Custom (contact sales)

Free Tier Available View full pricing →

Alibaba Cloud WAF

• AI-Powered Deep Learning Detection

  Uses Alibaba Cloud-developed rules combined with AI deep learning models and proactive protection rules. Threat intelligence is continuously updated from real attack data across the entire Alibaba Cloud network.

• Automatic Zero-Day Protection

  Detects and defends against new web vulnerabilities within hours of discovery, including zero-day vulnerabilities first exposed by Alibaba Cloud. No manual patching required.

• Bot Management

  AI-powered bot identification using fingerprinting, behavioral analysis, and network-wide intelligence. Handles web bots across websites, HTML5 pages, apps, and mini programs. Multiple response methods including blocking, CAPTCHA, throttling, and spoofing.

• API Security

  Proactively discovers APIs including legacy versions, unauthenticated endpoints, and APIs exposing sensitive data. Detects excessive data exposure and sensitive data leaks automatically.

• Data Leak Prevention

  Detects and prevents leaks of sensitive data including ID numbers, bank card numbers, phone numbers, and custom sensitive terms. Includes web tamper proofing that caches and locks critical page content.

• Hybrid Cloud Deployment

  Deploy WAF protection clusters in your own data centers alongside cloud WAF. Same protection capabilities whether traffic flows through Alibaba Cloud or on-premises infrastructure. Supports multi-cloud and hybrid architectures.

• Account Risk Detection

  Automatically identifies account-based attacks including dictionary attacks, brute-force attempts, credential stuffing, and weak password usage.

• Full Access Logging

  Records and stores complete web access logs. Supports real-time SQL-based querying, analysis, and custom alerting through integration with Alibaba Cloud Log Service (SLS).

• Network-Wide Threat Intelligence

  Exclusive threat intelligence accumulated from protecting Alibaba Cloud's massive customer base and internal services (Tmall, Taobao, Alipay). Continuously updated from real production attack scenarios.

Blackwall

• BotGuard Web Protection

  Cloud-based bot detection and mitigation for individual websites. Integrates at the web server level without DNS redirect. Behavioral analysis distinguishes legitimate crawlers from malicious bots.

• GateKeeper Reverse Proxy

  Distributed reverse proxy cluster for hosting providers. Sits in front of all hosted websites, providing transparent security without per-site configuration. Scales with hosting provider infrastructure.

• HTTP/3 QUIC Support

  GateKeeper supports HTTP/3 with QUIC protocol, providing better performance on high-latency and lossy connections. Automatic protocol negotiation for browsers that support it.

• Automatic SSL Management

  GateKeeper handles TLS 1.3 certificates automatically. SSL certificates are provisioned and renewed without manual intervention, reducing operational burden for hosting providers managing thousands of domains.

• WAF with OWASP Top 10

  Rule-based WAF protecting against SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, and other OWASP Top 10 attack vectors. Rules updated by the Blackwall security team.

• Behavioral Bot Detection

  Uses behavioral analysis to classify traffic as human, good bot (search engine crawlers), or malicious bot. Goes beyond simple user-agent checking to analyze request patterns and behavior.

• Rate Limiting

  Configurable rate limiting to mitigate brute force attacks, credential stuffing, and application-level DDoS. Can be applied per IP, per endpoint, or globally.

• CDN Caching Layer

  GateKeeper includes a caching layer that absorbs traffic spikes and reduces load on origin servers. Static content is served from the proxy layer, improving response times.

• Free Monitoring Mode

  Observe bot traffic and threat patterns without blocking anything. Useful for evaluation and traffic profiling. Available for both BotGuard and GateKeeper deployments.