NetRefer deploys Imperva Incapsula for improved website security with comprehensive DDoS and web application firewall protection Imperva, Inc., a cybersecurity leader that delivers best-in-class solutions to protect data and applications on-premises, in the cloud, and across hybrid environments, today announced that NetRefer, a leading provider of performance marketing software, is using the Imperva Incapsula service to protect its website from cyberattacks. NetRefer deployed the Incapsula service across its customer-facing websites to ensure protection from malicious attacks using the service’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) feature. NetRefer provides performance marketing software that helps companies automate their entire affiliate life cycles, from enrollment through CRM management, tracking, finance and rewards management, payments, and more. While NetRefer had DDoS protection from its hosting environment, it was extremely limited in its ability to scrub traffic, and it lacked a WAF. In addition, the hosting environment was not able to provide the kind of cross-platform visibility that NetRefer’s IT team needed to enable them to see and fix problems early on. After investigating various solutions, and consulting a leading market research firm’s report on Web Application Firewalls, the NetRefer IT team found Incapsula to be the only cloud-based WAF that met its requirements of being easy to use, able to keep downtime to a minimum, and fully scalable, fast and reliable. Being able to identify threats and block them on the fly is critical. By strengthening our security, we can show our clients that their data is safe,” said Christian Cutajar, IT manager for NetRefer. Since deploying Incapsula, NetRefer can now route its traffic at the DNS level instead of dealing with multiple on-premise devices. This allows them to focus on moving towards a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution long term. More importantly, the DDoS mitigation service protects their systems from continuous attacks. It also provides the increased visibility they need to find and deal with potential security threats and malicious activity before they become serious problems. “We now have a granular view of events and traffic across all our environments,” continued Cutajar. “Incapsula has significantly improved our security posture and reduced downtime by fending off attacks. My IT team now knows when there are attempts to access protected resources on our website, such as SQL injection requests on NetRefer’s clients’ front-end systems and XSS on specific page parameters.” “Securing our core services and avoiding system hijacking is absolutely critical. Investing in a solution that gives us, and our customers, peace of mind is a must, and we’ve found that with Incapsula,” concluded Cutajar. While NetRefer engaged Imperva to solve their DDoS mitigation needs with the Incapsula service, they also achieved a significant performance benefit by activating the Incapsula Content Delivery Network. “We saw a 50 percent performance improvement on our site after turning on the Incapsula CDN,” said Cutajar. “Performance is of utmost importance to NetRefer, and Imperva Incapsula with its scalability and comprehensive cybersecurity protection is the ideal offering for its platform-as-a-service solution,” said Terry Ray, CTO for Imperva. “NetRefer can keep its customers’ data safe while improving performance and visibility at the same time.” Imperva Incapsula is a cloud-based WAF delivered as a service that enables customers to protect websites and increase their performance, improve end-user experiences and safeguard web applications and their data from attack. Incapsula has robust WAF capabilities that can thwart web attacks, DDoS mitigation to ensure access to online business assets, a content delivery network to optimize and accelerate web traffic, and a load balancer to maximize the potential of web environments.

The healthcare industry has fast become a soft target for cyber-attacks and with good reason. Hospitals host both financial and protected health information, while offering a number of easy access point for ransomware attacks and insider threats.

Company background ALYN Woldenberg Family Hospital is Israel’s only pediatric rehabilitation facility, founded by Dr. Henry Keller back in 1932. The hospital has a customer database of more than 70,000 patients and hosts its main website in four languages and across three different domains. In addition, they have a special projects website in both Hebrew and English, which is used for resource development and to coordinate special events. It’s where people can sign up to participate in events, but it also accepts donations. The hospital IT team is worried that the events site could be a possible weak point, allowing hackers easier access to their systems, and the main reason they went searching for a good WAF provider.

The Challenge Five years ago, the IT team noticed an increase in cybercrime, especially in the healthcare industry. While the hospital had never experienced an attack, the security of their content management system (CMS) became a key concern. The team didn’t feel their cybersecurity vendor was updating the security on their CMS as often as they should, leaving them vulnerable and leading the team to go looking for a new vendor. Patient privacy and regulatory compliance are key concerns for ALYN Hospital and were mitigating factors in determining which cybersecurity suite to go for. This, paired with a best cost-benefit ratio and the constraints of a small IT team meant they had to find a managed system that was easy to integrate and required minimal upkeep. Initially checking out on-premise WAF systems, the team kept coming up against the cost of securing their sites and; because of strict government regulations, they were initially hesitant to move to a cloud-based system. Ultimately, however, they decided that the Incapsula cloud-based WAF was just the thing.

The Solution “We looked at community reviews and talked with colleagues at other hospitals and got the impression that Incapsula is one of the best in terms of cost-benefit ratio, which is important to us, in addition to robustness, ease-of-use, and integration, which was very smooth. It all proved to be correct, for which I am very glad,” said Uri Inbar, Director of IT for ALYN Hospital. Integration took less than a day and ALYN Hospital still manages its servers in-house, with a staff member who is now dedicated to security. Incapsula has been low maintenance from the start, so, while customer support was with them every step of the way at the beginning; they haven’t needed any for the last few years because the system has been running smoothly on its own. “It gives us peace of mind to know that someone has dedicated themselves to the subject and keeps us updated. It’s one less worry to take care of.”

Benefits Increased visibility for monitoring security threats: The Incapsula dashboard is easy to use and provides information that helps ALYN Hospital keep its systems secure. And for their special projects, they can even see which countries are generating the most traffic. 24/7 DDoS mitigation: ALYN Hospital uses Incapsula’s DDoS protection, which significantly improves security and reduces down time by fending off attacks. Good cost-benefit ratio:
One of the most important aspects of any new security system for ALYN, the costs were reasonable, especially given the security benefits they received from the Incapsula system. Faster content delivery:
While no formal studies were done, the IT staff has heard from some users that their CDN is delivering content faster than before. Just one more benefit of using Incapsula.

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