Enable a Web Application Firewall (WAF) on your site

A Web Application Firewall sits between visitors and your site, filtering out malicious requests, common attack patterns, and bot traffic before they ever reach your actual application, a real protective layer beyond your application's own code.

Even well-coded applications benefit from a WAF, since it catches broad classes of attacks (SQL injection attempts, known exploit patterns) generically, without depending on your application handling every edge case perfectly itself.

How to do it

1. 1
   Choose a WAF appropriate to your setup

   Cloudflare, Sucuri, and most major hosts offer WAF options, often with a reasonable free or low-cost tier.
2. 2
   Enable it with sensible default rules

   Most WAFs ship with strong default rule sets covering common attack patterns out of the box.
3. 3
   Test that legitimate traffic still works normally

   An overly aggressive WAF can occasionally block real users, verify normal site function after enabling.
4. 4
   Review WAF logs periodically

   Shows what is actually being blocked, useful both for confirming it works and spotting attack patterns.