3 Costly Mistakes in App and API Security and How to Avoid Them

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a reminder that protecting your organization isn’t just about having the right tools, but making smart, strategic investments in them. As threats evolve and budgets tighten, it’s more important than ever for security leaders to understand where their resources are going and whether their solutions are truly delivering value.

Cybersecurity spending is expected to see significant growth over the next decade. According to Gartner, the global market for information security and risk management is projected to reach $267.3 billion by 2026. At the same time, however, 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 point: they need to ensure that any security solutions, new or existing, perform effectively within 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. 

Failing to accurately forecast these costs ahead of time may cause budget fights during a critical moment or even impact budget allocation for the following year.

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 vendors, companies face a critical challenge that puts their business at risk: the lengthy and burdensome process of evaluating and deploying software, especially solutions like web application firewalls (WAFs) that handle sensitive data and impact customer experience. The opportunity costs of extending testing, deployment, or even procurement can add up quickly.

Extending this evaluation into a long proof-of-concept (POC) only compounds the issue. In many cases, WAFs that rely on AI or machine learning add further delays — their learning periods require time to observe and understand traffic patterns before they can take effective action. Depending on the setup, any delays at this stage can also expose applications to potential attacks or vulnerabilities due to inadequate security coverage.

Even after successfully navigating the POC phase, procurement and deployment can present further obstacles. Complicated pricing structures and procurement processes can slow down or even stop adoption at critical points if both parties struggle to align their objectives. And extensive deployments, even for tuning the WAF's "monitoring mode," can result in sunk personnel time and resources.

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 total cost of ownership 

Underestimating the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a WAF can have significant repercussions. Beyond the contract price, various factors like fees, headcount expenses, site downtime, and overages contribute to the overall TCO.

Ensuring the ongoing efficacy of your WAF can be costly with the wrong solution. Some WAFs require multiple headcounts to manage rules, address false positives, and monitor alerts. Others aren’t as configurable and depend heavily on professional services or support teams to make changes a reality. As applications and services continue to differentiate through unique digital experiences, these unforeseen costs can quickly escalate just to achieve the level of protection you need. Inflexible deployment options also limit cost-saving opportunities, such as edge computing and serverless functions.

Subpar customer service further compounds the problem. Lengthy service level agreements (SLAs) and slow ticket responses can delay timely attack mitigation and vulnerability virtual patching, or even prevent a site from coming back online. This not only undermines security under duress but also drives up the total cost of ownership through increased support tickets, incident response overtime, overage fees, and more.

Recommendation: Estimate TCO with crossfunctional 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 drives organizations to innovate and maintain their competitive edge. However, any process that slows down the software development lifecycle (SDLC) can result in wasted development hours and potential loss of sales. When revenue targets aren’t met, security budgets often come under additional scrutiny, meaning delays in the SDLC not only hurt the business but can also reduce the resources available for security teams themselves.

Unfortunately, security often carries the stigma of being the "Department of No," and legacy WAFs can inadvertently hinder progress. Updating WAF rules becomes a delicate, time-consuming task as it risks breaking applications, leading to increased development time and higher labor costs. Additionally, frequent false positives can lead to over-tuned WAF rules, blocking real users and lowering potential profits.

The rise of DevOps has revolutionized development teams, enabling faster and more efficient workflows. However, many WAFs lack the automation, accuracy, and flexibility needed to keep pace. This not only slows down development cycles but also contributes to higher labor costs as teams spend time troubleshooting or rewriting rules. Fastly’s SmartParse technology removes that friction by allowing teams to deploy WAF protections on demand without worrying about rules breaking the application. By eliminating the trial-and-error that often accompanies WAF deployments, SmartParse enables developers to maintain velocity, reduce costs, and deliver new features without introducing security bottlenecks.

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.

During Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it's a perfect time 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.