What makes us WAF
WAFs focus on a lagging indicator
WAFs are essentially large data pipelines. They ingest, transform, and analyze HTTP request payloads to determine risk.
These payloads are a symptom of an action that are several steps removed from what's actually happening in the application.
Because of this lack of context, false positives and negatives happen.
WAFs lack proximity to fully secure apps
This lack of proximity allows for breaches and attacks from other angles as your only defense with a WAF is pattern matching.
When you perform security in the application layer, there's no gaps between your apps and the security provided.