Defaults.Exposed › September 2026 census › v10 registry › CDN / WAF detection
CDN / WAF detection
Methodology v10 · canonical ID cdn-waf-detection · Infrastructure · informational · census as of September 5, 2026
Whether a content-delivery network / web-application firewall is protecting your site.
Definition
| Canonical ID | cdn-waf-detection |
|---|---|
| Category | Infrastructure |
| Grade impact | Informational, never moves the grade |
| Pass | Informational fingerprint: reports which CDN/WAF (if any) fronts the site; never moves the grade. |
| Fail | Not applicable (informational: no fail state). |
| Example (passing) | Response fingerprint indicates a CDN in front of the origin |
No-data rule: when this check couldn't be determined for a domain (timeout, SERVFAIL, redacted source) it returns N/A and is excluded from that domain's scoring denominator: "couldn't determine" is never counted as a failure. "Determined absent" is a real fail.
Prevalence across the census
The public census rollup does not publish a per-check figure for cdn-waf-detection (as of September 5, 2026).
Whole-census aggregates live at /data; no number is shown here rather than an estimated one.
Census denominator: 316,600,902 graded domains. Aggregates only: never an individual domain's result.
Fix it
Plain-English impact, cost of ignoring it, and step-by-step remediation: defaults.exposed/fix/infrastructure
Cite this check
Defaults.Exposed, "CDN / WAF detection (cdn-waf-detection)", Grading Methodology v10 (census as of September 5, 2026). https://defaults.exposed/methodology/cdn-waf-detection
Permalink: https://defaults.exposed/methodology/cdn-waf-detection ·
All 34 checks: v10 registry ·
Machine-readable: /methodology/checks.json ·
Licence: open data