Life of a request: Securing your app's traffic with Vercel

What this post added

This post details the layered security approach of Vercel, focusing on the Vercel Firewall, Deployment Protection, and the Web Application Firewall (WAF). It explains how the platform-wide Vercel Firewall provides automated, system-wide protection against DDoS attacks, malicious TCP connections, and other infrastructure abuses at network (Layer 3), transport (Layer 4), and application (Layer 7) layers. Deployment Protection offers project-level access control based on Vercel account, password protection, or trusted IPs. The WAF is described as a customizable layer with features like Attack Challenge Mode and a custom rules engine that allows granular traffic control using over 15 parameters (IP addresses, geolocation, user agents, headers) and actions (logging, challenges, blocking). It also highlights the integration of WAF persistent actions with the platform-wide firewall to stop repeat offenders without incurring usage costs.