A recent hands-on comparison of self-hosted Web Application Firewall products focused on time to first effective protection. The test environment used Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, 4 vCPUs, 8 GB RAM, and Docker, with a goal of blocking basic SQLi/XSS attacks. Four WAFs were evaluated for their deployment speed and initial security efficacy.

SafeLine WAF, a Docker-based solution, emerged as the fastest at approximately 15 minutes. It offers a built-in UI and semantic detection out of the box, though it requires Docker knowledge. BunkerWeb followed, taking 20–40 minutes with its NGINX wrapper and clean interface, but it has a smaller ecosystem.

Traditional options proved slower. ModSecurity with the OWASP Core Rule Set took 45–75 minutes, demanding manual configuration without a default UI. OpenAppSec, Check Point's ML-driven agent, was the slowest at 1–2 hours, suited for modern cloud-native stacks but complex for traditional setups. The key takeaway is that Docker-native WAFs offer the quickest path to meaningful protection.