A Web application firewall (WAF) provides specialized protection to web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic and can specifically target and mitigate threats like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. While network-based, host-based, and cloud-based firewalls can offer protection at different levels, a WAF is specifically designed to secure web applications against these types of web-based threats. A Unified Threat Management (UTM) device provides broad network security solutions but is not specialized in web application security like a WAF is. An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) can prevent known network-based attacks, but does not have the specialized capability to protect web applications from the unique vulnerabilities that WAFs are designed to defend against.