We are hosting our primary web application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and want to strengthen our security layer using Google Cloud Armor. Currently, we use a standard HTTP(S) Load Balancer, but we need to implement WAF rules that specifically target SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). How do we configure these security policies to inspect incoming traffic before it reaches our pods? Are there pre-configured rule sets in Google Cloud that we can simply enable to cover the OWASP Top 10 risks without manual regex writing?
3 answers
Have you considered using the "Preview Mode" for your Cloud Armor policies to see what traffic would have been blocked before you actually go live with the "Deny" action?
Integrating Cloud Armor with GKE is highly efficient when done through the BackendConfig custom resource. You don't need to write complex regex because Google provides "Pre-configured WAF Rules." You can simply reference rule sets like sqli-v33-stable or xss-v33-stable in your security policy. Once the policy is created, you link it to your GKE service via a BackendConfig. This ensures that the Load Balancer inspects all traffic at the edge of Google's network, dropping malicious packets before they ever consume your cluster's CPU or memory.
The best part of Cloud Armor is the adaptive protection. It uses Machine Learning to detect Layer 7 DDoS attacks by learning your application's normal traffic patterns over time.
I agree with Jennifer. The ML-based protection caught a credential stuffing attack on our login page that our manual rules would have completely missed.
David, that is a life-saver for production apps. We ran our rules in "Preview Mode" for a week and realized our legitimate API calls from a partner were being flagged as SQLi due to a specific parameter format. By using the "Log-only" feature, we adjusted our exclusion filters without causing any downtime for our users. It’s the best way to fine-tune your security posture in a "Zero Trust" environment while ensuring high availability for your services.