RiskMandate v1.34.4
The business case · Web application firewall

OWASP Coraza, by the risk it changes

An OWASP web application firewall that can sit in front of the HTTP traffic an agent sends or receives. Its documentation describes an audit engine that logs complete transactions. Written as an answer, that is a partial record of what the agent did, for the traffic that passes through it, once somebody switches the audit engine on: its default is off.

Open source: Apache-2.0 · OWASP · get involved

The deployment: The model's typical deployment, with the answers this project addresses stated as they are without it: what it did cannot be reconstructed.

The model: the RiskGraph Explorer's 49 facts, 49 risks and 10 roles, copied into this site with its provenance; the register below is computed, not written. How.

01 · What it does

In its own words, and nothing more.

  • An audit engine that records complete HTTP transactions. “The SecAuditEngine directive is used to configure the audit engine, which logs complete transactions.” · coraza.io, read 24 September 2026
02 · The answers it changes

Same deployment, different answers.

The model asks sixteen questions about an agent deployment. A product’s effect is written as the answers it changes, and each change says what kind of change it is: a statement of what is true, an expectation the agent is asked to meet, a setting, or a boundary enforced by something the agent’s grant does not include.

The questionWithout itWith itHow, and who holds it
Could you reconstruct what it did last Tuesday?NoPartlya setting, held by the deployer. Partly, and only for HTTP traffic routed through Coraza with SecAuditEngine turned on. It records the request and the response, not what the other side did next. “The SecAuditEngine directive is used to configure the audit engine, which logs complete transactions.” · coraza.io, read 24 September 2026
03 · The register, before and after

3 retired, 1 new, 22 unchanged.

Computed from the model for the deployment above: every risk that holds without it, and every risk that holds with it. A new entry is either one the change brought to light, where an answer replaced a don’t know, or a narrower risk in place of a wider one, where the answer moved from no to partly. Either way the register is more exact, and a register that grows because something was found is working.

3retired
1new
25 → 23entries on the register

Retired

RISK-13
What the agent did cannot be reconstructedoperational · SRE / platform on-call, CISO
RISK-33
The organisation could not account for what its agent didoperational · Board
CORP-5
Accountability failure — the organisation cannot demonstrate who decided whatcorporate · CEO, Board

New

RISK-24
Only part of what the agent did can be reconstructedoperational · SRE / platform on-call
04 · From the operator to the board

Who carries less, and who carries the same.

Each risk is assigned to the roles it belongs to, and each role reports to another until the board. The count beside each role is the entries it holds without the product and with it.

Operators

who run it, and are paged when it goes wrong
SRE / platform on-call9 → 9retired RISK-13 · new RISK-24
Customer-facing service owner2 → 2

Owners

who own what it may touch, and can say what happened
Platform owner3 → 3
CISO9 → 8 −1retired RISK-13
DPO6 → 6

Executives

who answer for speed, product, cost and the whole
CTO3 → 3
Chief Product Officer4 → 4
CFO0 → 0
CEO4 → 3 −1retired CORP-5

The board

who must be able to defend how it is run
Board6 → 4 −2retired RISK-33, CORP-5

At the board: the corporate register

Corporate risks have no facts of their own. They hold while any risk that leads into them holds, so a single product rarely retires one. What it changes is how many reasons the board is being given.

CORP-1
Regulatory exposure — the organisation may be operating outside obligations it is subject tostill holds · risks leading into it: 3 before, 2 after
CORP-2
Customer harm — customers may be affected by decisions or changes nobody madestill holds · risks leading into it: 2 before, 2 after
CORP-3
Operational resilience — the organisation may be unable to restore a service it depends onstill holds · risks leading into it: 1 before, 1 after
CORP-5
Accountability failure — the organisation cannot demonstrate who decided whatretired · risks leading into it: 1 before, 0 after
CORP-6
Loss of control — the organisation operates a system it may not be able to stop or explainstill holds · risks leading into it: 2 before, 2 after
06 · What it adds

Every product is also a new thing in the estate.

It sits in the request path, and its audit log stores complete transactions, headers and bodies included, which makes the log itself something to protect. Its documentation states the rule engine's default as Default: Off, and describes a DetectionOnly mode that processes rules but never blocks, and in which only the first bytes of a request body are inspected.

Free, but not free

What adopting it takes, before any of this is true.

An open-source project costs nothing to download and something to adopt. Every change above depends on the work below, and most of it is customisation to your own deployment.

  • Run it where the agent's HTTP traffic has to pass, and keep its configuration out of the agent's own reach.
  • Turn the audit engine on, decide where the log lives, and decide who may read it.
  • Tune the Core Rule Set to the traffic you actually have, which is where most of the effort goes.
What this does not claim

The limits of the case, stated by the case.

  • That it blocks anything by default. Its rule engine is off until somebody turns it on.
  • Anything the Core Rule Set detects. Attack detection does not answer any of the model's sixteen questions, so it is not in this case.
  • That it was tested. Nothing was installed or run; every change rests on the documentation quoted beside it.
  • That the register is complete. It is one model, for one stated deployment. A different deployment changes the answers, and so the case.

Next. Published, and sent to the project's maintainers at the same time. If a change is wrong, or another answer should move, the case changes with the date they said so.

The same method, for your product

Make the case in the register’s own terms.

If you build a security product for agents, the case for it can be written the same way: what it does in your own words, the answers it changes, and the register before and after. If a case here is wrong about you, tell us and it changes with a date.