ORLANDO, Florida – Barracuda is packaging its increasingly diverse security platforms into an easier-to-digest bite, which is probably good because it’s also adding a new platform option for customers.

The new offer is its already available Web Application Firewall (WAF) service, but this time offered as-a-service built on Microsoft Azure. Tim Jefferson, SVP of data protection at Barracuda, explained that the WAF-as-a-service product provides local availability across all 54 Azure regions. It continues to offer the same level of control as the standard WAF offering but with an easier “few-clicks” deployment and activation model through the Azure Marketplace.

Jefferson said the service was designed to remove a friction point for customers looking to tap into its security services.

“Gartner and all the analyst information that we have seen shows that only around 10% of web applications have the proper protection in place,” Jefferson said. “And a lot of that is just not having enough expertise to deploy firewalls.”

A WAF protects public and internal web applications deployed on premises and in the cloud. Companies deploy WAFs in front of servers to protect applications and APIs against external and internal attacks.

Barracuda launched a cloud-delivered version of its WAF product last year. This bolstered the service being initially offered as a hardware device, a virtual appliance, or a public-cloud appliance in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Barracuda was in the “challenger” quadrant in Gartner’s latest WAF rankings alongside F5, Cloudflare, and Fortinet. Market “leaders” include Imperva and Akamai.

Gartner noted that these “cloud web application and API protection” (WAAP) services provide a compelling enterprise option.

“In the long term, cloud WAAP services, which were built from the beginning to be multi-tenant and cloud-centric, avoid the costly maintenance of legacy code,” the analyst firm noted in its most recent report. “They also provide a competitive advantage, with faster release cycles and the rapid implementation of innovative features.”

The new Barracuda option is also packaged as part of the company’s broader Cloud Application Protection (CAP) platform. This platform provides web application security that includes application vulnerability scanning and remediation, advanced bot protection, DDoS protection, and API security.

Jefferson explained that CAP was an “unification of all the different point solutions that we have.”

“We want to be the point vendor where you can get all of what you need to protect your applications,” Jefferson said. “So we’ve taken all of those point solutions and combined them into one umbrella.”

CAP is built on Azure, and Nitzan Miron, VP of product management for application security at Barracuda, explained that customers can select the option through the Azure Marketplace, system integrators, or resellers, and that it’s just “a 5-step wizard to get started.”

“If you are an expert you can continue to customize everything, but if not then you can still get that protection without having to work through customization,” Miron said.