Growth Opportunities in Web Application Firewall Solutions in Asia-Pacific, 2024 2028

Revenue Forecast

The revenue estimate for the base year 2023 is $812.9 million, with a CAGR of 16.3% for the study period 2021–2030

The Impact of the Top 3 Strategic Imperatives on the Web Application Firewall WAF Industry

Industry Convergence

• Why
  • To keep pace with the surge in use of applications and growing threat landscape across the digital economy, organizations are looking for a holistic solution that offers WAF, DDoS protection, API security, bot mitigation, and other security features under a single solution.
  • The holistic approach also aims to avoid security gaps, overlapping functions, complexity, and inefficiency to fence off multi-vector web attacks.
• Frost Perspective
  • In the next 5 years, WAF vendors will increasingly integrate their solutions with security tools such as security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) or attack surface management (ASM) to continue developing a holistic approach toward web security.
  • Some vendors will incorporate the holistic solution with their existing cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) or secure access service edge (SASE) solutions, aiming to achieve better security outcomes by extending a broader type of security attack.

Disruptive Technologies

• Why
  • Organizations have started to implement shift-left strategies by implementing security measures throughout the application development cycle to avoid critical bugs and security vulnerabilities that might lead to costly consequences during application delivery or deployment.
  • By making security an integral part of the development and operations (DevOps) process, the shift-left approach helps to bridge the disconnection between software development and security teams, providing earlier awareness of potential development or security issues.
• Frost Perspective
  • With the shift-left approach, most WAF vendors provide better integration into the CI/CD pipeline and support tool locks such as Terraform to enhance their integrations as service providers.
  • In the next 5 years, WAF solutions will continue to integrate with existing application security testing (AST) and dynamic application security testing (DAST) technologies, linking the DevOps process with help organizations build more secure applications and improve their security posture.

Transformative Megatrends

• Why

  • As the threat landscape has become more sophisticated, emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML)-driven security solutions is growing to defend against evolving attacks.
  • Organizations increasingly look for WAF solutions that natively integrate AI and ML to provide real-time threat detection and response as well as more dynamic security protection.
• Frost Perspective
  • In the next 3 years, WAF vendors will continue to incorporate AI and ML technologies into their solutions to enhance threat detection and response capabilities.
  • Solutions will also leverage Artificial Intelligence to not only better identify threats but also to recommend mitigation steps. By continuously learning and improving, AI can be embedded into cybersecurity frameworks that become more robust and adaptive cyber defense.
  • By continuously learning and improving its understanding of cybersecurity threats, generative AI embedded into cybersecurity solutions aims to deliver a more robust and adaptive cyber defense.

Scope of Analysis

• Web application firewall (WAF) comprises hardware, software, or services that organizations deploy at the front of a web server. A WAF analyzes open systems’ interconnection with layer-7 traffic to protect applications from attacks that aim to exploit their vulnerabilities.
• The study uses information and insights from Frost & Sullivan’s secondary research, vendors, channel partners, and other industry stakeholders. However, all revenue estimates and forecasts are based on Frost & Sullivan’s analysis and modeling.
• The market size is based on sales revenues from WAF hardware and software/virtual appliances and cloud-delivered WAF services.
• The study excludes revenues from product maintenance service charges; professional services, such as deployment, consulting, maintenance, and managed security; and add-on modules on other platforms, including unified threat management and application delivery controller.

Market Segmentation

WAF Solutions

On-premises WAF Solutions

• Customers deploy on-premises hardware or software applications and fully manage them through internal information technology (IT) teams.
• Vendors design stand-alone hardware WAF appliances or software WAF applications to protect web servers from application-layer attacks. Other technologies, such as DDoS protection, authentication, and application vulnerability scanners, can integrate into the appliance or application.

Cloud-based WAF Solutions

• Customers can deploy WAF services through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model or a virtual WAF as an image in private or public cloud environments.
• In an SaaS model, WAF vendors provide a shared or dedicated WAF solution through (network-based) cloud service offerings available in different subscription packages. The vendor’s security operations center manages the service, and customers can use the complete range of security functionalities without on-premises/physical solutions.

Competitive Environment

Key Competitors

• Akamai
• Alibaba Cloud
• Barracuda Networks
• Array Networks
• CDNetworks
• Citrix
• Cloudflare
• EDGIO
• F5
• Fastly
• Fortinet
• Imperva
• Nexusguard
• Penta Security
• Prophaze
• Qualys
• Radware
• Sangfor
• Ubika
• Topsec
• Venustech
• Akamai
• Alibaba Cloud
• Array Networks
• Barracuda Networks
• Citrix
• Cloudflare
• Edgio
• F5
• Fastly
• Fortinet
• Imperva
• Nexusguard
• Prophaze
• Qualys
• Radware
• Ubika
• Akamai
• Alibaba Cloud
• Barracuda Networks
• CDNetworks
• Citrix
• Cloudflare
• Edgio
• F5
• Fastly
• Fortinet
• Imperva
• Nexusguard
• Penta Security
• Qualys
• Radware
• Akamai
• Barracuda Networks
• CDNetworks
• Citrix
• Cloudflare
• Edgio
• F5
• Fastly
• Fortinet
• Imperva
• Nexusguard
• Penta Security
• Qualys
• Radware