science

Incapsula

Incapsula is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Incapsula rather than just read about it. In short: Imperva Incapsula is an American cloud-based application delivery platform. It uses a global content delivery network to provide web application security, DDoS mitigation, content caching, application delivery, load balancing and failover services.

Key takeaways

Incapsula belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Incapsula to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Incapsula from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Imperva Incapsula is an American cloud-based application delivery platform. It uses a global content delivery network to provide web application security, DDoS mitigation, content caching, application delivery, load balancing and failover services.

History Incapsula was founded in 2009 by Gur Shatz and Marc Gaffan. The company has its origins in Imperva (NYSE:IMPV), an American-based cyber security firm which at the time owned 85% of Incapsula. It was spun out from Imperva in 2009. While reported to be growing at a rate of between 50%, 76% and 102% per quarter as of August 2013, the company lost over $1.7 million in the second quarter of that same year. In February 2014 Imperva bought the remaining part of Incapsula and it became a product line within the parent company. In 2013 Incapsula launched a tool named "Backdoor Protect". The tool is reported to detect and block malicious back-doors and "webshells". The tool works by comparing a website's traffic against a database of known back-doors. Later that year, the company announced a two factor authentication feature called Login-Protect, as an integrated feature of its products. In October 2013 Incapsula was credited with having protected against one of the Internet's largest attacks on a website. The September 24, 2013, attack was said to have lasted nine hours with 100 Gbit/s of traffic at its peak. The attack was against BTC China, a bitcoin and yuan trading platform. Incapsula also announced in 2013 that it would be implementing Layer 7 load balancing capabilities. In December 2016 Incapsula reported that it had defended against the largest DDoS attack then recorded, which peaked at over 650 Gbit/s and 200Mpps.

Service and features Incapsula has multiple features that are used in the security and performance of websites:

Application delivery control (ADC) Content delivery network (CDN) DDoS mitigation Global server load-balancing (GSLB) Web application firewall (WAF) Incapsula WAF protects websites by changing their Domain Name System (DNS) records to route traffic through Incapsula. Incapsula then filters out malicious attacks from bots and website scrapers. As of 2011 it was effective against cross site scripting, illegal resource access and all other OWASP top 10 threats, SQL injections, and web 2.0 threats including academic web archiving, comment spam, fake registrations, malicious bots, referrer spam, and site scraping. Incapsula also has a content delivery network that caches websites on their server network to speed up website load time. The cached information is returned from a server closest to the end user to provide fast page loads. This also allegedly militates against slow responses due to heavy server traffic.

References

External links Official website Company blog

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Incapsula

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Incapsula claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Incapsula before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Incapsula ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Incapsula

In research: Incapsula appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Incapsula in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Incapsula is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2014 mergers and acquisitions, Companies based in Redwood Shores, California, DDoS mitigation companies, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Incapsula outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Incapsula in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Incapsula means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Incapsula out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Incapsula in simple terms?

Why does Incapsula matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Incapsula?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Incapsula.