Building a High-Availability Architecture with Free SafeLine WAF

In today's complex cyber landscape, constructing a robust security defense is an essential mission for every website guardian. This article delves into the design of a modern web security architecture that integrates CDN acceleration, efficient Nginx proxying, and deep protection from SafeLine WAF.

Architecture Overview

Layer 1: Acceleration—Optimizing User Experience with CDN

• Objective: Improve user experience and mitigate DDoS attack pressure.
• Implementation: Deploy a global CDN network to allocate user requests to the nearest server, reducing latency while dispersing potential high-volume attacks. This eases the burden on subsequent security layers.

Layer 2: Precision Defense with SafeLine WAF

• Core Value: SafeLine WAF serves as the architecture's cornerstone, analyzing and filtering traffic distributed by the CDN. It effectively identifies and blocks common web threats like SQL injection, XSS attacks, and malicious bots.
• Technical Highlights:
  • Intelligent Rule Engine: Adapts to evolving attack methods by dynamically learning and updating protection rules.
  • Accurate Defense: Behavior-based analysis ensures low false-positive rates when intercepting malicious traffic.

Layer 3: High Availability with Nginx Load Balancing and Failover

• Objective: Ensure service continuity and enhance system resilience.
• Implementation: Nginx acts as the front-end proxy, efficiently distributing requests across backend servers with built-in failover mechanisms. This guarantees seamless transitions to backup servers in case of failure, ensuring uninterrupted operations.

Deployment Guide

Domain Resolution Sequence

1. CNAME the domain to the CDN.
2. Set the CDN origin IP to SafeLine's IP.
3. Configure SafeLine’s upstream server IP to point to the Nginx server’s IP.

SafeLine Community Edition Configuration

• Custom Rules:
  1. I set up a rule to allow traffic from my PC.

1. There are many more rules you can customize to fit your needs.

• General Settings:
  • Add any necessary information, such as IP ranges to block.

• Rate Limiting:
  • My settings are fairly lenient, but you can adjust them as needed.

• Protection Modules:
  • Balanced protection is recommended; switch to high-frequency protection if under heavy attack.

Protective Results

Comments

[Bogomil Shopov - Бого]

This looks like a sales pitch.

[Lulu]

Thanks for the feedback! I wanted to share how SafeLine works, but I'll keep it more neutral next time.