Check Point launched a cloud-native web application and API security product that the vendor says eliminates the need for manually tuning web application firewalls (WAFs) and a high rate of false-positive alerts that they produce.

The new CloudGuard AppSec product, which is based on technology Check Point acquired from ForceNock in 2019, uses contextual artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent attacks against cloud apps. “The technology has been incorporated into the CloudGuard Infinity Architecture and is now offered as part of our unified solution for cloud native security,” TJ Gonen, Check Point’s head of cloud product line, wrote in response to questions.

Web application breaches doubled in 2020, according to Verizon’s most recent Data Breach Investigations Report. Traditional WAFs rely on threat signatures and manual rule tuning, but as companies move to cloud-native apps, and almost half of all containers live for less than five minutes, traditional WAFs can’t keep up. These rapid changes cause legacy WAFs to produce an unsustainable overload of false positive alerts and manual admin work, Gonen said.

CloudGuard AppSec solves this by automating application security in any cloud environment or infrastructure, he added. “Our strategy is to help enterprises secure their most critical workloads – their applications and data – with a unified platform that protects all workloads, including serverless functions and containers, from code to application runtime, all at the speed of DevOps.”

The product blocks application attacks such as site defacing, information leakage, user session hijacking, and all of the OWASP Top 10 web application security risks, according to the vendor. Its AI engine continually adapts to application changes and self-updates to ensure continuous security.

Additionally, as applications evolve, and create and expose more APIs, CloudGuard AppSec automatically blocks hackers from using APIs to expose sensitive data, inject commands, or extract API keys. It also uses behavioral analysis to distinguish between human and non-human interactions with applications, thus protecting against bot threats such as credential stuffing, brute force attacks, and site scraping.

Check Point’s new app security product comes as vendors and investors alike are realizing the growing importance of securing cloud-native applications.

Earlier this month Cisco moved into application security with a new runtime protection tool that detects vulnerabilities in production and automatically blocks attacks.

And Snyk, which built a cloud-native application security platform for developers and security teams, said it ended 2020 with more than $350 million in new funding, which pushed its valuation to $2.6 billion, and recorded a 200% year-over-year revenue increase.