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WAF Managed Rules

WAF Managed Rules allow you to deploy pre-configured managed rulesets that provide immediate protection against:

  • Zero-day vulnerabilities
  • Top-10 attack techniques
  • Use of stolen/exposed credentials
  • Extraction of sensitive data

These managed rulesets are regularly updated. Each rule has a default action that varies according to the severity of the rule. You can adjust the behavior of specific rules, choosing from several possible actions.

Rules of managed rulesets have associated tags (such as wordpress) that allow you to search for a specific group of rules and configure them in bulk.

​​ Managed rulesets

Cloudflare provides the following managed rulesets in the WAF:

RulesetDescription
Cloudflare Managed Ruleset

Created by the Cloudflare security team, this ruleset provides fast and effective protection for all of your applications. The ruleset is updated frequently to cover new vulnerabilities and reduce false positives.

Ruleset ID: ...376e9aee 

Cloudflare OWASP Core Ruleset

Cloudflare's implementation of the Open Web Application Security Project, or OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set. Cloudflare routinely monitors for updates from OWASP based on the latest version available from the official code repository.

Ruleset ID: ...c25d2f1f 

Cloudflare Exposed Credentials Check

Deploy an automated credentials check on your end-user authentication endpoints. For any credential pair, the Cloudflare WAF performs a lookup against a public database of stolen credentials.

Ruleset ID: ...14069605 

Cloudflare Free Managed Ruleset

Available on all Cloudflare plans. Designed to provide mitigation against high and wide impacting vulnerabilities. The rules are safe to deploy on most applications. If you deployed the Cloudflare Managed Ruleset for your site, you do not need to deploy this managed ruleset.

Ruleset ID: ...dfb893ba 

The following managed rulesets run in a response phase:

RulesetDescription
Cloudflare Sensitive Data Detection

Created by Cloudflare to address common data loss threats. These rules monitor the download of specific sensitive data — for example, financial and personally identifiable information. Available in Security > Sensitive Data.

Ruleset ID: ...499d988e 

​​ Availability

The managed rulesets you can deploy depend on your Cloudflare plan.

​​ Customize the behavior of managed rulesets

To customize the behavior of managed rulesets, do one of the following:

  • Create exceptions to skip the execution of WAF managed rulesets or some of their rules under certain conditions.
  • Configure overrides to override the default rule action or disable one or more rules of managed rulesets. Overrides can affect an entire managed ruleset, specific tags, or specific rules in the managed ruleset.

Exceptions have priority over overrides.