Positive Technologies Discontinues Active Development of PT AF 3, Shifts Focus to PT AF PRO and PT Cloud AF
Positive Technologies is winding down active development of PT Application Firewall 3 and reallocating its main engineering resources to PT AF PRO and the cloud-native PT Cloud AF.
Current customers of the older WAF solution will continue to receive technical support, but the product is unlikely to gain major new features going forward.
Why the strategy is changing
Over the past decade, corporate web infrastructure has expanded dramatically. Organizations that once managed a handful of websites now operate hundreds of applications, APIs, and microservices distributed across on-premises data centers, multiple clouds, branch offices, and subsidiary networks.
At the same time, the threat landscape has evolved. Compromising a web application is frequently no longer the attacker’s final objective but rather a foothold for deeper penetration into internal corporate networks.
According to Positive Technologies data, exploitation of vulnerabilities in internet-accessible web applications remains the most common initial access technique, responsible for 36% of successful attacks against corporate environments.
New flagship: PT AF PRO
The company’s primary focus is now PT AF PRO, a solution developed from scratch over more than six years. It is designed to protect hundreds of applications in highly distributed infrastructures and offers centralized security policy management, remote site connectivity via external agents, and the ability to apply updates without interrupting traffic processing.
Protected applications can be segmented into isolated spaces with dedicated compute resources and granular access controls for security events. This architecture targets large enterprises and holding companies that operate multiple security teams with differing service requirements.
Cloud offering gains priority
The second strategic priority is PT Cloud AF, a cloud-delivered WAF for applications and APIs that eliminates the need to purchase and maintain hardware. Customers can manage the service themselves or delegate configuration and ongoing operations to a partner.
Over the past year, the customer base for PT AF PRO has doubled, reflecting growing demand for scalable, distributed web application protection.
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