Sydney, 11 July 2011 – Pure Hacking, Australia’s leading specialist information security consultancy, has won the NSW Finalist iAward for its PureWAF managed web application firewall service. The 2011 iAwards recognises companies at the cutting edge of technology innovation and honours the achievements of home-grown Australian innovators.

PureWAF is an alternative web application firewall solution to better manage the mitigation and monitoring of security breaches. PureWAF can be implemented as a virtual appliance or embedded within the web server on an internal network or externally in the cloud. The cloud-based PureWAF implementation allows clients to take advantage of the scalability and cost benefits of a flexible computing environment without compromising the security of their web application.

Pure Hacking’s CEO, Rob McAdam commented on the announcement: “We are thrilled to be the NSW winners of the Security Application iAward. To be recognised by the industry and your peers as a leader in innovation when that is exactly what we set out to achieve, is very satisfying. To know that a security application solution we have developed here in Australia has inspired the judging panel is an honour.”

Development of Pure Hacking’s managed web application firewall service, PureWAF, was driven by both the market demand for better protection for web applications from hackers and cyber criminals and easier management for the enterprise.

With the rapid adoption of web application technologies within Australian organisations, traditionally deployed WAFs were no longer effectively able to identify and repel the increasing number of identified risks from hackers and cybercriminals.

“Security managers just don’t have the ability to re-trace a security breach and implement fixes directly within the compromised source code or application,” continued McAdam.

“Pure Hacking has developed a reputation for excellence in its penetration testing capabilities and we are now using this knowledge and experience to develop a new breed of WAF technologies,” he continued.

PureWAF detects and blocks attacks targeting web applications, inspecting all inbound and outbound application traffic including encrypted traffic. Deployment of PureWAF ensures an organisation’s security and compliance needs are well managed. It has been developed to replace traditional appliance-based WAFs with a tailored solution that can handle business logic attacks, distributed denial of service, zero-day vulnerabilities, brute force and other malicious attacks.