3 costly mistakes in app and API security and how to avoid them

Cybersecurity spending is expected to see significant growth over the next decade. Gartner projected the global market for information security and risk management to reach $267.3 billion by 2026. Yet ongoing economic and global uncertainty is pushing business leaders to be more selective, focusing on cost reduction and optimizing their cybersecurity investments.

This reality puts security leaders at a critical juncture: they must ensure that any security solutions, whether new or existing, perform effectively while adhering to accurate cost estimates. But without a proper understanding of how a security solution works, it can be easy to spend more time, money, resources, and personnel than originally anticipated. 

How can security leaders protect their security costs and avoid financial headaches? One way to do so is to understand common errors in vendor selection that lead to unanticipated overspending.  Let’s take a look at three of these mistakes and what teams can do to avoid them. 

Mistake #1: Prolonging evaluation and deployment timelines

When it comes to adopting or upgrading security solutions, companies face a critical challenge that puts their business at risk: evaluating and deploying software like web application firewalls (WAFs) can be lengthy and burdensome, with high opportunity costs that impact customer experience. Proof-of-concepts (POCs) that extend testing periods only compound the problem, and AI- or machine learning-based WAFs often require additional time to learn traffic patterns before acting effectively — leaving applications potentially exposed during the process.

Even after successfully navigating the POC phase, procurement and deployment can present further obstacles. Complex pricing, lengthy approval processes, and extensive tuning or monitoring efforts can delay adoption and consume significant personnel resources. Together, these factors create a bottleneck that slows down security improvements and increases operational risk.

Recommendation: Streamline WAF evaluation and deployment 

Organizations must prioritize evaluation and deployment processes that are guided by clearly defined goals and success criteria.

To help streamline evaluation, teams should confirm average deployment times, technical requirements, and legal/procurement estimates early in the process. They should also align with the vendor on any technological or organizational hurdles upfront, so both sides can address potential blockers before they cause delays.

By surfacing these details early and agreeing on them collaboratively, businesses can reduce wasted cycles, shorten deployment timelines, and protect their applications without unnecessary costs or personnel strain.

Mistake #2: Underestimating the total cost of ownership 

Underestimating a WAF’s total cost of ownership (TCO) can have significant repercussions. Beyond the contract price, ongoing expenses such as additional headcount, professional services, and overages add up quickly. Some WAFs demand multiple personnel to manage rules, handle false positives, and monitor alerts, while less flexible solutions rely heavily on professional services teams to implement changes.

As applications evolve to deliver unique digital experiences, these unforeseen costs can quickly escalate. Inflexible deployment options also limit savings from edge computing or serverless functions, and subpar customer service — including slow ticket responses and lengthy SLAs — can delay attack mitigation or site recovery. Together, these factors increase TCO while undermining security effectiveness.

Recommendation: Estimate TCO with cross-functional stakeholders

Accurately estimating TCO beyond contract price can’t be done in a silo. Security leaders can better estimate a WAF provider’s potential costs by discussing the implications with cross-functional teams and reviewing first and third-party content about the vendor. 

Because a WAF involves many parts of the business, interviewing highly-impacted cross-functional teams, like site reliability, DevOps, customer support, and incident response, can reveal the impact of an ineffective WAF. 

During the evaluation phase, security leaders should seek out a WAF provider that has clear SLAs and overage policies to estimate potential costs. They can also utilize review sites, like Gartner Peer Insights, or leverage commissioned studies such as the Total Economic Impact™ (TEI), to read real user experiences from a variety of different company sizes and verticals.

It’s equally important to consider what it actually takes to get value from the investment. Some WAFs require professional services to configure, tune, or maintain effectively – costs that may recur over time and quickly add up if the solution isn’t designed for easy, in-house management. Expanding the scope of your TCO forecast can help prevent an expensive ripple effect that impacts the entire business.

Mistake #3: Impeding agile development and DevOps processes

Agile development helps organizations stay innovative and competitive, but anything that slows the software development lifecycle (SDLC) can result in wasted development hours and potential loss of sales. Additionally, Security often carries the stigma of being the “Department of No” and legacy WAFs can inadvertently hinder progress. Updating rules can be slow and risky, false positives can block legitimate users, and development hours are lost to troubleshooting instead of innovation.

Fastly’s SmartParse technology removes this friction by enabling on-demand WAF protections that don’t break applications. By eliminating the trial-and-error common with traditional WAFs, SmartParse empowers developers to maintain speed, reduce costs, and deliver new features confidently — turning security from a bottleneck into a business enabler.

Recommendation: Choose a WAF that embraces agile development

The speed of business demands that developers adopt the philosophy of “Always Be Shipping”, and security must evolve to keep pace. If preventing security incidents isn’t enough to protect their budget, leaders can show how adopting a modern WAF can enable faster and safer product development.

When evaluating a WAF, organizations must prioritize solutions that keep the company shipping –  like integrating with DevOps tools and practices, automated rule updates, and support for multiple deployment options and architectures – to create better workflows and reduce inefficiencies. Choosing or remaining with a legacy WAF can provide negative value if it hinders feature development or innovation.

Optimize your WAF investment: Avoiding common pitfalls

Walking through these mistakes, it’s clear to see how easy it would be for security teams to spend and invest much more in a WAF than originally planned or needed. This can spark difficult conversations during budget planning when leaders are being asked to do more with less. These potential pitfalls are not always obvious and can lead to operational inefficiencies, lower department reputation, or even a less secure production environment.

Security leaders need to feel empowered to make financially sound decisions without compromising security performance. Selecting a modern, Next-Gen WAF not only avoids bursting your budget but also ensures resources are allocated more efficiently across the business, enabling people across the organization to innovate and operate with confidence.

There’s no time like the present to reevaluate your current WAF strategy and explore solutions purpose-built to deliver both security and efficiency. By avoiding these common pitfalls, your team can stay ahead of threats and achieve its goals, not just this month, but year-round. 

Talk to Fastly today to see how we can help streamline your WAF strategy and unlock value across your organization.