Why Buy Two Boxes? Combining WAF and Load Balancing in a Single Appliance

When Web Services Become the Front Line

For an insurance provider, the website and its online services are where much of the business now happens — and where much of the risk lives, too. As web traffic climbed and attacks against web services grew more frequent, Hyundai Insurance China recognized that strong, high-performance web security was no longer optional. It set out to find a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that could keep pace — one that was not only effective against attacks, but also simple to operate, with straightforward configuration and easy log analysis from a single dashboard.

Two Problems, and the Cost of Solving Them Separately

Web security was only half the challenge. As traffic surged at peak times, the company also needed load balancing to keep its web servers from being overwhelmed — along with the high availability and business continuity that health-check-driven failover provides.

Conventionally, meeting both needs means deploying two separate systems — a web application firewall and a load balancer — each in a redundant configuration. But standing up and maintaining two solution stacks is expensive, and Hyundai Insurance China was reluctant to take on that cost and complexity. What it really wanted was a single solution that could deliver web security and load balancing together, without compromising on either.

One Platform, Purpose-Built for Both

After weighing which WAF best fit its security policies and operating environment, Hyundai Insurance China chose PIOLINK’s WEBFRONT-K.

What makes WEBFRONT-K different is its foundation. Rather than running on general-purpose hardware, it’s engineered on a high-performance switching architecture derived from PIOLINK’s proprietary application delivery networking — the same technology behind PIOLINK’s Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs). Because WEBFRONT-K is a WAF built on that ADC platform, it delivers availability, performance, and security through built-in load balancing and SSL offloading — with no separate load balancer required.

The company deployed two WEBFRONT-K units as a redundant pair, each with an embedded SSL acceleration module. Offloading SSL encryption and decryption to WEBFRONT-K meant the web servers handled encrypted traffic with no performance penalty. On the security side, WEBFRONT-K blocked malicious attacks, inspected and identified client requests and unauthorized access, and shut down suspicious connections. On the delivery side, its L7 load balancing improved web server reliability, while the redundant configuration kept services seamless and dependable.

Safer, Faster, and Simpler to Run

The results reached beyond security. WEBFRONT-K didn’t just protect and stabilize the web servers — it made the whole data center more effective, with faster application delivery and higher server availability.

Just as important was the day-to-day experience. PIOLINK’s monitoring provided real-time visibility and effective log analysis, making the system easier to operate and security policies simpler to set. For Hyundai Insurance China’s network operators, that combination of straightforward configuration and easy policy management translated into a genuinely better operational experience.

For any organization weighing web security against performance and cost — financial services firms especially — Hyundai Insurance China’s experience makes the case that WAF and load balancing don’t have to be two separate purchases. Delivered on the right platform, they can be one: stronger protection, better performance, and lower total cost of ownership, all at once.