DEV Community

Arina Cholee
Arina Cholee

Posted on

How One Cross-Border E-Commerce Company Secured Its Payment System Using Apache + SafeLine WAF

A growing cross-border e-commerce company once suffered a major security setback: during a peak shopping event, its payment API was hit by heavy CC attacks. The server went down, orders were lost, and leaked payment data created serious compliance risks.

The team tried several traditional WAF solutions, but most were either difficult to deploy or incompatible with their Apache-based architecture. It wasn’t until they adopted SafeLine WAF that the issue was fully resolved.

Smooth Integration with Apache — No Complex Reconfiguration

One of the biggest advantages SafeLine brought to the team was exceptionally smooth Apache compatibility.

Traditional WAFs often require:

  • Editing Apache config files
  • Installing custom modules
  • Adjusting network routes
  • Long, error-prone manual tuning

In comparison, SafeLine supports transparent bridge mode, meaning:

  • No need to modify Apache’s IP or routing
  • No changes to the existing server architecture
  • Deployment finishes within minutes

Following the official guide, the company’s engineers completed the deployment in under 30 minutes:

  1. Download the installation package
  2. Start SafeLine via Docker
  3. Add a simple forwarding rule in Apache

The entire setup ran without any compatibility issues.

Enterprise-Grade Protection for High-Traffic Payment APIs

SafeLine’s intelligent semantic analysis engine became the core of the company’s new defensive layer.

The system effectively blocked:

  • Injection attacks targeting payment APIs
  • CC attacks during traffic surges
  • Malicious parameter tampering
  • Vulnerabilities from third-party plugins or payment modules

According to internal tests:

  • Malicious sample detection rate: 71.65%
  • False-positive rate: only 0.07%
  • Detection latency: < 1 ms
  • Throughput: 2000+ TPS per core

Even during major sales events, when the payment interface exceeded 1000 requests per second, SafeLine maintained stable performance without slowing down the checkout process.

The team also highlighted the usefulness of the “waiting room” feature, which helps offload malicious traffic during large-scale CC attacks while allowing legitimate users to complete payments smoothly.

Lower Costs, Faster Deployment, Easier Maintenance

Switching to SafeLine provided significant cost benefits:

  • No expensive hardware appliances
  • No high recurring maintenance fees
  • No specialized rule-writing required

By running SafeLine in a High Availability architecture, the company reduced infrastructure spending by over 60% compared to its previous security stack. Deployment time was also cut to one-third of traditional WAF products.

One Year of Stable Operation — Zero Payment Breaches

Since implementing SafeLine, the company has operated securely for more than a year without any payment-related incidents.

The SafeLine dashboard provides clear, real-time insights into:

  • Attack trends
  • Defensive actions
  • API security posture

This helps the security team perform fast risk reviews and continuously improve their protection strategy.

For teams running Apache and handling payment-related traffic, SafeLine WAF offers a powerful combination of:

  • Easy deployment
  • Strong security
  • Low operational cost
  • Enterprise-level stability

Get Started for Free
Official Website: https://waf.chaitin.com
Discord Community: https://discord.gg/3aRJ4qfwjA
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/chaitin/SafeLine

If your cross-border e-commerce platform needs reliable payment protection, SafeLine is absolutely worth exploring.

Top comments (0)