F5 enhances application security with new services in its core distributed cloud services package.
Introduced in 2023, F5's Distributed Cloud Service is a SaaS-based platform that enables application management, infrastructure management, and security services across customers' public clouds, private clouds, and edge sites. The vendor's new API Discovery and Protection service aims to give customers an easy way to discover API endpoints, monitor traffic for vulnerabilities, provide testing, and secure their applications.
“The main idea is to protect enterprises from data leakage through unmonitored or poorly implemented or poorly configured APIs,” said F5 Executive Vice President and Chief Product said Director Kara Sprague. “This service gives businesses a clearer view of which APIs are exposed and what kind of data those APIs are exchanging, making it easier to protect that data. You will be able to do it.”
Sprague said the days of monolithic, traditional client/server three-tier applications are over. According to F5's 2024 State of Application Strategy study, 88% of organizations are deploying apps and APIs across hybrid environments spanning on-premises and cloud locations, and approximately 40% of organizations are deploying apps in six different environments. and operates an API.
“Today's new apps are container-based, microservices-based, and those container-native and microservices-based apps are all API-fronted. This is effectively the gateway to modern application logic, and it's now vulnerable to cyberattacks. has become a prime target,” Sprague said.
The F5 service leverages API security technology recently purchased from Wib Security. Acquired technology includes code analysis, vulnerability detection, and risk assessment capabilities that help customers monitor application development processes to mitigate threats and identify issues, wherever they are, before they connect to the corporate network. You will be able to do it.
“App security is becoming increasingly important in the industry. Companies need to understand how their applications are used, developed, and secured through vendor interactions, supply chain considerations, and/or regulatory compliance management. “We are forced to investigate and document what is being done,” said Christopher Steffen, research director at Enterprise Management Associates.
“Businesses are starting to realize that many of their apps are multi-generational, meaning the apps in use may have been developed on foundations that are technically generations old. “Yes, and in some cases it is likely,” Steffen said. “The technology is so outdated that it often requires experts to refactor the app into something more modern and usable. This is very costly, and even if you do refactor it, Security often becomes secondary or tertiary in the process.”
While many of the features existed as separate, standalone products, F5 consolidates the tools into a comprehensive platform that should be of interest to both developers and managers, Steffen said. “If developers had one tool that was designed with their processes in mind and that gave them actionable feedback rather than a vague 'this is broken' message, are much more likely to use it,” says Steffen.
“Currently, development engineers must use a loosely integrated set of tools to perform many of the same functions that F5 solutions do at once. Instead, we're looking for the best security tools that minimize friction in the process. I think F5 has gone a long way toward achieving that,” Stefan said.
In addition to API services, F5 is committed to bringing AI to distributed cloud services.
For example, later this year, F5 will introduce a natural language-based AI assistant that will help IT security teams more easily identify anomalies, query and generate policy configurations, and apply remediation steps, Sprague said. says Mr.
“This assistant will be part of the Distributed Cloud console and will allow users to interrogate datasets to get recommendations on security measures and features to apply to different applications, APIs, and other use cases.” Sprague said.
The AI Assistant will be part of a larger AI-based service called the AI Data Fabric, which aggregates data from distributed cloud services, F5's NGINX application support system, and BIG-IP networking product portfolio. Sprague said the company also expects to use this data to provide reports and analytics, as well as train and deploy machine learning models to perform inferences to make apps more secure and optimized. “The idea behind AI Data Fabric is to create an intelligent data fabric that enables enterprise customers to respond to threats in real time, generate insights that support more informed decisions, and take rapid action such as remediation. “We want to provide the best possible service,” Sprague said.
