IPA FE Subject A 2025 Question 10

It watches the traffic to a website and blocks accesses that look like attacks — a WAF (web application firewall) works at the level of HTTP requests.

An ordinary firewall filters by address and port, so it lets every request to port 443 through. A WAF sits in front of the web application and inspects the content of each request, the URL, parameters and form data, against attack signatures and rules. Requests carrying SQL injection, cross-site scripting or directory traversal patterns are blocked before they reach the application.

Answer (d)

Why not others:

• •(a) — collecting logs from many systems centrally to detect and analyse threats is a SIEM (security information and event management)
• •(b) — the Wi-Fi Alliance certified wireless LAN encryption standard supporting AES is WPA2
• •(c) — one appliance that combines a firewall with antivirus, intrusion detection and other functions under integrated management is UTM (unified threat management)

Key rule: Match the tool to the layer it inspects: a firewall checks addresses and ports, IDS/IPS check network traffic patterns, and a WAF checks the content of web application requests.

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