Wallarm
API and web application security platform vendor
Wallarm is a cybersecurity vendor providing a combined API security and web application firewall (WAF) platform that detects and blocks attacks against APIs and web applications while also identifying API-specific risks such as shadow…
Definition
Wallarm is a cybersecurity vendor providing a combined API security and web application firewall (WAF) platform that detects and blocks attacks against APIs and web applications while also identifying API-specific risks such as shadow APIs, broken authentication, and business logic abuse. It positions its product at the intersection of traditional WAF protection and dedicated API security testing, aiming to cover both perimeter defense and deeper API-specific vulnerability discovery in one platform.
Overview
Wallarm emerged as API traffic began to dominate web application architectures, a shift that exposed a gap in traditional web application firewalls, which were built primarily to catch classic web attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting rather than API-specific risks such as broken object-level authorization or excessive data exposure through overly permissive endpoints. Wallarm's positioning is to extend WAF-style perimeter defense with dedicated API discovery, testing, and runtime protection capabilities. Mechanically, the platform combines several functions: an API discovery engine that inventories all API endpoints in use, including undocumented or forgotten shadow APIs that were never registered with security teams; automated API security testing that checks discovered endpoints against categories in the OWASP API Security Top 10, such as broken authentication and excessive data exposure; and a runtime protection layer, built on WAF-style traffic inspection, that blocks malicious requests in real time based on both signature detection and behavioral anomaly analysis. Together these functions aim to cover the full API security lifecycle from discovery through testing to runtime defense. Within the API security category, Wallarm competes most directly with Salt Security, Noname Security, and Traceable AI, all of which similarly combine discovery, posture assessment, and runtime protection for APIs, though each vendor differentiates on depth of behavioral detection, breadth of integration with API gateways, and emphasis on testing versus runtime defense. Wallarm's WAF heritage gives it particular strength in runtime traffic inspection compared to API security vendors that started purely from a discovery and posture-management angle. In practice, organizations running API-heavy architectures, particularly those exposing APIs to third-party developers or partners, deploy Wallarm at the network edge or within a service mesh to inventory their full API surface, run automated security tests against newly discovered endpoints, and block malicious traffic patterns such as credential stuffing or automated scraping bots in real time. Security teams use its discovery reports to find shadow APIs that bypassed normal API governance processes. The trade-off with a combined WAF-and-API-security platform is that depth in either dimension can lag a pure-play specialist: organizations with highly sophisticated API architectures and complex business logic abuse patterns sometimes pair Wallarm with, or evaluate it against, vendors more narrowly focused on deep behavioral API threat detection, and any WAF-style runtime layer requires ongoing tuning to avoid false positives against legitimate traffic. Teams with heavy east-west microservice traffic should also confirm how deeply Wallarm inspects internal service-to-service calls versus only externally facing endpoints before relying on it as a complete API security program.
Key Features
- Automated discovery of all API endpoints including shadow APIs
- Security testing aligned to the OWASP API Security Top 10
- Runtime protection combining signature and behavioral anomaly detection
- Web application firewall functionality alongside API-specific defenses
- Blocks credential stuffing, scraping bots, and automated abuse
- Integrates with API gateways and service mesh architectures
- Covers discovery, testing, and runtime protection in one platform
- Reporting on API risk posture across an organization's full API surface