A computer implemented method, information processing system, and computer program product manage web application firewall rule configuration. A web application is analyzed. A set of data elements within the web application is identified. Each data element in the set of data elements stores information that is sent from a web client to a web server. Each data element in the set of data elements is analyzed. A data type is associated with each data element in the set of data element. The data type describes a type of data stored by the data element. A web application firewall rule recommendation is automatically generated for each data element based at least on the data type associated therewith.