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Update WAF documentation with expanded security details#1132

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joehoyle merged 3 commits intomasterfrom
issue-602-update-waf-documentation
Mar 26, 2026
Merged

Update WAF documentation with expanded security details#1132
joehoyle merged 3 commits intomasterfrom
issue-602-update-waf-documentation

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@mikelittle mikelittle commented Feb 24, 2026

Updated the following sections:

Protection against exploits — expanded to mention:

  • IP reputation lists (including AWS') and managed rules for known attack patterns
  • Blocking of sensitive files, system paths, and XML-RPC API
  • Proactive rule updates for newly discovered vulnerabilities (without mentioning the advance notice agreement)

Protection against request floods — expanded with:

  • Layers 3, 4, and 7 breakdown (network, transport, application)
  • Three tiers of rate limits described generically: CDN-level, per-container (dynamic pages), and sensitive pages (login/admin) — no exact numbers
  • I also mentioned the self-service allow-lists (but couldn't find a page to point to)

New "Monitoring & alerting" section — covers:

  • 24/7/365 global on-call team with multiple tiers
  • Internal metrics (CPU, memory, disk, scaling, network) and external metrics (error rates)
  • Urgent support ticket alerting

New "Incident response" section — covers:

  • Tiered escalation (primary → secondary → tertiary → leadership) without exact timeframes
  • Five-step incident process: creation, customer notification, updates, report, root cause analysis

I specifically didn't mention:

Protection against exploits — expanded to mention:

- IP reputation lists (including AWS') and managed rules for known attack patterns
- Blocking of sensitive files, system paths, and XML-RPC API
- Proactive rule updates for newly discovered vulnerabilities (without mentioning the advance notice agreement)

Protection against request floods — expanded with:

- Layers 3, 4, and 7 breakdown (network, transport, application)
- Three tiers of rate limits described generically: CDN-level, per-container (dynamic pages), and sensitive pages (login/admin) — no exact numbers
- I also mentioned the self-service allow-lists (but couldn't find a page to point to)

New "Monitoring & alerting" section — covers:

- 24/7/365 global on-call team with multiple tiers
- Internal metrics (CPU, memory, disk, scaling, network) and external metrics (error rates)
- Urgent support ticket alerting

New "Incident response" section — covers:

- Tiered escalation (primary → secondary → tertiary → leadership) without exact timeframes
- Five-step incident process: creation, customer notification, updates, report, root cause analysis

I specifically didn't mention:

- Exact rate limit numbers
- Specific error rate thresholds
- Exact escalation timeframes
- Details about advance WordPress vulnerability notice agreements
- Internal tooling names like PagerDuty

Fixes: humanmade/altis-documentation#602
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Looks good

@mikelittle
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@rmccue A reminder you wanted final approval on this PR

rmccue
rmccue previously requested changes Mar 10, 2026
Comment thread docs/WAF/README.md Outdated
Comment thread docs/WAF/README.md Outdated
Comment thread docs/WAF/README.md Outdated
mikelittle and others added 2 commits March 23, 2026 10:27
Co-authored-by: Ryan McCue <me@ryanmccue.info>
@mikelittle mikelittle requested a review from rmccue March 23, 2026 10:58
@joehoyle joehoyle dismissed rmccue’s stale review March 26, 2026 01:23

new reviews

@joehoyle joehoyle merged commit 3bb70fb into master Mar 26, 2026
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@joehoyle joehoyle deleted the issue-602-update-waf-documentation branch March 26, 2026 01:24
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Add some more information about our WAF set up to the documentation

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