At its ASEAN Anticipate 2016 event, F5 Networks has announced new enhancements to F5’s security capabilities that will enable customers in Asia Pacific to more effectively ensure application security, resolve critical app protection gaps and strengthen anti-fraud defenses.
The proliferation of Internet-facing applications has led to pervasive threats on business-critical web services, along with an increase in the sophistication of attacks. The announcement includes the introduction of BIG-IP 12.1 software and enhancements to the web application defense via BIG-IP Application Security Manager(ASM).
The ASM features customizable bot detection methods that enable detailed analysis, and more extensive device ID tracking, to secure business-critical applications with advanced threat protection and visibility over application and location.
Another feature is accelerated blacklisting of malicious IPs in hardware at high rates for layer 7 threats, providing coverage until feed lists are updated with BIG-IP ASM. It also offers visibility into HTML 5 WebSocket connections for comprehensive policy protection where other WAFs fail. While WebSocket represents a standard for bi-directional real time communication between servers and clients, there is often concern around security. Updates in BIG-IP ASM will address this concern and enable customers to focus on the application deployment with less worries.
Meanwhile, enhanced capabilities automatically mitigate L3–7 attacks upstream in the ISP realm, stop evasive application use of random ports, and control SSH channel user-initiated actions with simple custom policy enforcement with BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager(AFM).
Whether on-premise or in a software-defined data center (SDDC), BIG-IP AFM mitigates threats based on more attack details than traditional network firewalls, protecting organizations from the most aggressive volumetric distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks before they can reach the data center.
Other features include expanded support for Azure environments, including integrated F5 web application firewall (WAF) capabilities in Azure Security Center, to ensure the same level of services in the cloud as in the data center.
“More information, including sensitive data, is being accessed via applications by users within and outside the corporate network,” says Emmanuel Bonnassie, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific, F5 Networks. “With the challenge of enforcing security policies across hybrid infrastructure environments, fragmented identities and decentralized applications introduce significant risk for vulnerabilities. A security approach that centers around protecting the network and the devices that are connected to it is no longer enough. Applications and access to those apps are becoming the new perimeter, protecting them and having the ability to detect breaches and respond quickly defines the future state of security.”