Configuring Radware DefensePro for SSL inspection and encrypted traffic visibility

Encrypted traffic now represents the vast majority of data crossing Australian enterprise networks, with most financial, healthcare and government services in Sydney and Melbourne using TLS by default. For security teams operating Radware DefensePro appliances, this means the behavioural detection engine and DDoS mitigation capabilities see only an opaque wrapper unless SSL inspection is properly configured. Setting up decryption on DefensePro allows the platform to inspect payloads for advanced threats, enforce data loss prevention and apply granular security policies that would otherwise be invisible inside the encrypted session.

The Australian regulatory environment adds weight to this conversation. Under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, organisations must report incidents involving personal information, which makes encrypted traffic analysis a compliance concern as well as a security one. APRA-regulated entities in the financial sector, including banks headquartered in Sydney and Melbourne, are further bound by CPS 234, requiring demonstrable controls over information assets. Many local practitioners also align with the ACSC Essential Eight, where application control and network traffic analysis directly benefit from visibility into TLS-encrypted flows.

DefensePro handles SSL inspection through its integrated SSL inspection engine, which sits in front of the behavioural analytics and signature matching subsystems. The appliance performs a man-in-the-middle function, intercepting sessions, presenting a forged certificate to clients and forwarding re-encrypted traffic to back-end servers. When implemented correctly, the process is transparent to end users and produces logs that can feed SIEM platforms, including solutions commonly deployed across Australian SOC environments in Brisbane, Perth and Canberra.

This walkthrough covers the practical steps a systems administrator follows when standing up SSL decryption on DefensePro, from certificate preparation through policy creation and ongoing troubleshooting. The guidance assumes familiarity with basic PKI concepts, network routing and Radware's AppDirector or Alteon load balancing ecosystem where applicable.

Planning the SSL inspection deployment

Before touching the appliance interface, map the traffic flows that will be subject to decryption. In a typical Australian enterprise, this includes outbound web browsing from corporate endpoints, inbound traffic to public-facing web applications hosted on AWS Sydney or Azure Australia Central regions, and east-west traffic between data centre zones. Each flow requires a different policy posture, so documenting the scope prevents accidental inspection of personal banking sessions, health portal traffic to providers such as Healthdirect Australia, or government services under myGov that frequently use strict certificate pinning.

Plan the network placement carefully. DefensePro is normally deployed inline or in a tap configuration, but SSL inspection requires full inline positioning so the appliance can intercept and re-encrypt traffic. Confirm that routing and any adjacent firewalls such as Check Point or Palo Alto instances can handle the increased session count, because every TLS handshake now creates two sessions on the DefensePro side. Capacity planning should account for both throughput and SSL TPS, particularly in environments where mobile and remote workers in regional Western Australia and Queensland rely on VPN concentrators that multiply encrypted session counts.

Preparing certificates and the CA infrastructure

The foundation of any SSL inspection deployment is a trusted internal certificate authority. DefensePro needs a CA certificate that it uses to sign forged certificates presented to clients during interception. Generate or reuse a subordinate CA under your existing PKI hierarchy, then export both the CA certificate and its private key in PEM format. Many Australian organisations obtain their internal CA from Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services, but dedicated EJBCA or OpenSSL-based hierarchies remain common in hybrid environments.

Import the certificate bundle into DefensePro through the Security menu, then assign it as the inspection certificate for each policy. Where devices use mobile device management profiles, push the CA certificate to corporate iOS, Android and Windows endpoints so they trust the forged certificates without producing browser warnings. Defence and intelligence staff in Canberra-based agencies often enforce additional checks on certificate pinning and extended validation, so it is worth understanding which applications will reject the inspection certificate entirely and exclude them from the policy scope.

Initial DefensePro configuration

Once the network path is verified and certificates are loaded, enable SSL inspection at the global level within the DefensePro management console. Under the SSL Inspection settings, configure the protocol versions and cipher suites the appliance will negotiate with clients. Most Australian enterprises disable SSLv3 and TLS 1.0 outright, align with TLS 1.2 as a minimum and selectively permit TLS 1.3 where supported by upstream servers. Configure the maximum certificate chain depth and session cache parameters to balance performance against the memory footprint of the appliance.

Next, define the network objects that describe which traffic sources and destinations will participate in inspection. Group internal subnets by location, separating Sydney CBD office ranges from Melbourne datacentre ranges and remote worker VPN pools. Where AWS workloads are in play, populate the object definitions with the relevant VPC CIDR ranges from the Sydney or Melbourne regions. Linking these objects to policies ensures the engine only decrypts traffic that actually requires visibility, reducing computational overhead and limiting privacy exposure.

Creating decryption policies and rules

With the groundwork in place, build the actual policies under the Security Policies section. Start with a baseline rule that inspects all outbound HTTPS traffic from corporate subnets, excluding exceptions for financial services, healthcare portals and any application with known certificate pinning. Attach the appropriate CA certificate to the rule and enable logging so SOC analysts in your local SIEM can correlate events. DefensePro supports per-rule actions, allowing the inspection to drop, allow or redirect sessions based on the verdict from the behavioural engine.

For inbound traffic terminating on web applications behind the appliance, configure the reverse proxy path so DefensePro inspects client-to-appliance sessions while maintaining the original TLS session to the origin server. This pattern is particularly useful for load-balanced environments where Alteon or third-party ADCs sit behind DefensePro. Define specific rules for high-value targets such as customer portals, partner extranets and internal APIs exposed through AWS API Gateway endpoints in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) region.

Testing, monitoring and troubleshooting

Before going live, test with a representative sample of users in each office location. Confirm that browsers do not display certificate warnings, that mobile devices connect without prompts and that critical line-of-business applications function normally. Common Australian deployment pitfalls include certificate distribution gaps in remote sites such as Pilbara mining operations and slow CRL or OCSP responses that add latency to each inspected session. Enable OCSP stapling where supported and ensure the appliance has reliable connectivity to revocation services.

Ongoing monitoring centres on the DefensePro dashboards and integrated logging. Watch the SSL inspection throughput, session establishment rate and CPU utilisation to spot capacity pressure early. Tune policies when false positives appear, typically by adding exceptions for specific destination hosts or extending the trusted CA list to include partner organisations. Regular reviews aligned with the organisation's change management cadence, often quarterly in larger Australian enterprises, keep the inspection posture aligned with evolving application portfolios and threat landscapes.