Security company Imperva‘s SMB spin-off company Incapsula opens its service to the public today. Incapsula provides a content delivery network (CDN) style service, aimed at speeding up websites, and a hosted Web application firewall (WAF). Previously, Imperva’s WAF product SecureSphere was out of reach for smaller organizations. By offering a distributed, cloud-based service, Incapsula is able to offer prices starting at $50 a month. There is also a free plan for non-commercial websites.
The first 100 ReadWriteWeb readers to sign-up for the service can try out the service for free until the end of the year.
Incapsula will compete most directly with CloudFlare, which offers similar security-as-a-service and CDN-like features. CloudFlare’s basic plan is free, and it’s pro plan – which includes a hosted WAF – costs $20 a month. Incapsula will also compete with Dasient, which offers a security-as-a-service that monitors and alerts site owners when sites are compromised.
Incapsula is depending on Imperva’s experience and reputation to compete with CloudFlare. Incapsula uses the same enterprise-grade technology that is used in SecureSphere, and can make sites PCI compliant.
Why should small sites be worried about having an enterprise-grade WAF in place? Even small sites can be victims of malicious hacking. Criminals frequently compromise sites to inject links to spammy websites or malware. According to research conducted by Dasient, over 1.3 million websites host malware.
Sites that host malware or contains thousands of spammy links can be black listed by Google, or see significant drops in search engine positions.
WordPress users looking for a completely free solution may want to look into the variety of free security plugins and monitoring tools for the blogging platform.
Photo credit: Circo de Invierno.
