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AWS WAF VS Microsoft IIS

Compare AWS WAF VS Microsoft IIS and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

AWS WAF logo AWS WAF

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits.

Microsoft IIS logo Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services is a web server for Microsoft Windows
  • AWS WAF Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-02
  • Microsoft IIS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-25

AWS WAF features and specs

  • Scalability
    AWS WAF is designed to scale automatically with your application. It can handle high traffic loads without manual intervention, making it suitable for dynamic and unpredictable environments.
  • Ease of Integration
    AWS WAF easily integrates with other AWS services such as CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, and API Gateway, providing a seamless security solution within the AWS ecosystem.
  • Custom Rule Configuration
    Users can define custom rules and policies to suit specific security requirements. AWS WAF provides a flexible rule creation environment, enabling the creation of complex firewall rules.
  • Managed Rules
    AWS WAF offers a set of pre-configured managed rules that provide protection against common threats such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting, which saves time and effort for administrators.
  • Comprehensive Logging and Monitoring
    AWS WAF integrates with AWS CloudWatch and AWS Kinesis Firehose to provide detailed logging and monitoring capabilities. This helps in tracking, analyzing, and reacting to security events in real time.
  • Cost-Effectiveness
    AWS WAF operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing businesses to scale costs with usage. This can be particularly cost-effective for smaller organizations or startups.

Possible disadvantages of AWS WAF

  • Complexity
    While AWS WAF offers powerful features, its setup and configuration can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with AWS or web security concepts.
  • Initial Learning Curve
    New users may find it challenging to get up to speed with AWS WAF due to the need to understand AWS services and security rules syntax. This initial learning phase can be time-consuming.
  • Rule Processing Latency
    In some cases, the processing of complex rules can introduce latency in response times. This may impact the performance of high-speed applications that require minimal delay.
  • Service Dependency
    AWS WAF is deeply integrated within the AWS ecosystem. As a result, its effectiveness is dependent on the use of other AWS services, which may not be ideal for multi-cloud strategies.
  • Cost for Heavy Usage
    While the pay-as-you-go model can be cost-effective for small-scale operations, businesses with high traffic volumes might find the cumulative costs to be significant.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    AWS WAF is designed primarily for protecting online applications. Offline or on-premise applications require different solutions, and AWS WAF may not be well-suited in these scenarios.

Microsoft IIS features and specs

  • Integration with Windows Server
    Since IIS is developed by Microsoft, it offers seamless integration with Windows Server, leveraging features like Active Directory, .NET Framework, and PowerShell for enhanced performance and manageability.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    IIS features a graphical user interface (GUI) that simplifies the server setup and management process, making it easier for administrators to configure and maintain web applications.
  • Extensive Documentation and Support
    Being a product from Microsoft, IIS offers comprehensive documentation, extensive online resources, and professional technical support, which can be highly beneficial for enterprise users.
  • Security Features
    IIS includes various built-in security features, such as dynamic IP restrictions, request filtering, application pooling, and integration with Windows authentication, making it a secure choice for hosting web applications.
  • Performance and Scalability
    IIS is optimized for performance and can effectively handle multiple requests and high-traffic websites. It also supports load balancing and server farms to enhance scalability.

Possible disadvantages of Microsoft IIS

  • Cost Considerations
    Unlike some other web servers that are open-source and free, IIS may incur licensing costs as it requires a Windows Server license, making it potentially expensive for small-scale deployments.
  • Platform Dependency
    IIS runs exclusively on the Windows platform, which can be a limitation for organizations that use a diverse set of operating systems or prefer open-source ecosystems like Linux.
  • Complex Configuration for Advanced Features
    While IIS offers a user-friendly interface for basic setups, configuring advanced features may require considerable expertise and can become complex, particularly for those unfamiliar with Microsoft's environment.
  • Performance Overheads
    IIS may introduce performance overhead due to the multiple layers of abstraction and integration with Windows features, which can affect performance in some high-demand scenarios compared to lightweight, minimalist web servers.
  • Lower Community Support
    Open-source web servers like Apache and Nginx have large, active communities that contribute to continuous improvement and troubleshooting. IIS, being a proprietary product, has a smaller community in comparison.

AWS WAF videos

Protecting Your Web Application Using AWS Managed Rules for AWS WAF - AWS Online Tech Talks

More videos:

  • Review - Amazon AWS WAF (Web application Firewall ) Training
  • Review - AWS WAF REVIEW

Microsoft IIS videos

Analyzing Microsoft IIS Web Logs - Part 1

More videos:

  • Review - My SEO Video 2017 Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to AWS WAF and Microsoft IIS)
Web Application Security
100 100%
0% 0
Web And Application Servers
Security Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare AWS WAF and Microsoft IIS

AWS WAF Reviews

We have no reviews of AWS WAF yet.
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Microsoft IIS Reviews

Apache, IIS, NGINX, GWS : What’s Your Choice?
Utilizing a specific type of virtual or physical server determines the type of web server software you use. If you prefer Microsoft, then you will prefer to use IIS (Internet Information Services / Server) by Microsoft as your primary web server application solution. If you use Linux distribution, you have other alternatives like Apache, NGINX and LiteSpeed.
Source: www.milesweb.in
What Is the Most Popular Web Server Application in 2021?
Despite being bundled with most modern Microsoft software, IIS loses out to Apache on its own devices. The main selling point here is performance. While IIS has kept up with Apache in recent times, Apache has historically been performing much better, which still gives it an edge over IIS.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, AWS WAF seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 36 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

AWS WAF mentions (36)

  • Understanding AWS Regions and Availability Zones: A Guide for Beginners
    AWS CloudFront is the star of the show here. It caches static content (like media, scripts, and images) to ensure fast, reliable delivery. Other AWS services that run at the edge include Route 53 for DNS routing, Shield and WAF for security, and even Lambda via Lambda@Edge — giving you the ability to run serverless logic closer to the user. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • 🚀🚀Setting Up AWS Firewall Manager Used For Auditing Security Groups in AWS Organization accounts.
    AWS Firewall Manager is a security management service that makes it easier to centrally configure and manage firewall rules across your accounts and applications in AWS Organizations. You can use Firewall Manager to manage AWS WAF, AWS Shield Advanced, VPC, security groups, AWS Network Firewall, and more. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • 12 Practices and Tools to Ensure API Security
    Like Adam said - WAF is Cloudflare's bread-and-butter product offering, but Amazon also offers AWS WAF in case you want to stick to a single-cloud solution. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Block direct access to CloudFront origins with custom headers and AWS WAF
    Amazon Web Application Firewall AWS WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor the HTTP(S) requests that are forwarded to your protected web application resources. AWS WAF lets you control access to your content. Based on criteria that you specify, such as the IP addresses that requests originate from or the values of query strings, the service associated with your protected resource responds to... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • AWS Serverless Security: Preventing HTTP Flood DDoS Attack
    AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications / APIs against common web exploits and bots. Attacks may affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF gives you control over how traffic reaches your applications by enabling you to create security rules that control bot traffic and block common attack patterns. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

Microsoft IIS mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Microsoft IIS yet. Tracking of Microsoft IIS recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing AWS WAF and Microsoft IIS, you can also consider the following products

OpenSSL - OpenSSL is a free and open source software cryptography library that implements both the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, which are primarily used to provide secure communications between web browsers and …

Apache HTTP Server - Apache httpd has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996

Sqreen - Sqreen is a web application security monitoring and protection solution helping companies protect their apps and users from attacks. Get started in minutes.

Apache Tomcat - An open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies

Let's Encrypt - Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).

LiteSpeed Web Server - LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) is a high-performance Apache drop-in replacement.