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“Props” to our Partners for the Strong Value Prop

One of the interesting things about the cyber security industry is the degree to which vendors essentially wind up on the same side. Indeed, many companies actively coordinate and cooperate to better secure key components of the broader online infrastructure that has come to dominate so much of our world.

F5 is committed to working with other industry leaders for two simple reasons: it’s how we ensure our products deliver the best possible functionality in the widest range of circumstances, and it is how we drive additional value for our customers, no matter their architectural approach or existing investments. In combining these two goals, our partnerships drive added value (for us, for customers, and for partners) by helping ensure that networks and the apps that run on them perform at their peak. It’s a true win-win-win situation.

Better Security through Greater Interoperability

Nowhere is the value of cooperation more evident than in our rich security-focused partner ecosystem, which includes the following security leaders, among others (and which is on full display this week at F5’s global Agility 2018 conference). For this article, we’ll focus on OPSWAT, Venafi, and Webroot further below, while also calling out the following organizations and a specific tie-in:

  • Thales – Integrates their HSM with BIG-IP hardware and virtual platforms to deliver higher levels of FIPS compliance
  • Remote Spark – Helps enable a BYOD strategy or IoT approach for accessing remote desktops or streaming applications through HTML5 from any device
  • Flowmon Networks – Helps service providers and large enterprises to protect their customers from volumetric DDoS attacks
  • WhiteHat Security – Provides the vulnerability assessment that helps customers defend their web applications from attacks
  • Solace – Connects tens of millions of IoT devices by routing information between devices, applications, and people across multi-cloud and on-premises environments
  • Digital Element – Provides trusted and accurate geolocation information
  • Appdome – Delivers Anti-Bot protection for any Android or iOS apps to provide an attack-free mobile experiences in seconds
  • AppViewX – Bridges the gap between application owners and network administrators with an application-specific view of and control over application delivery networks
  • FireEye – Advanced threat management platforms that leverages F5’s SSL Orchestrator for high-performance decryption.

OPSWAT—Protect Against Malicious Network Traffic

For an example, consider the value of deploying F5’s BIG-IP solutions alongside MetaDefender from OPSWAT. One instance when this is particularly useful is for situations where users are uploading files (e.g., photos) to your web application. You’ve already got BIG-IP in place to handle local traffic management and to ensure your applications are fast, secure, and available. And thanks to our close partnership with OPSWAT, BIG-IP can easily and automatically send uploaded files to the MetaDefender server to be scanned for harmful content before passing them on to your web app. MetaDefender can scan data with 30 or more anti-malware engines, and if malicious data is found, the file can be sanitized before it ever hits your app. Filter, evaluate, sanitize—all easily integrated into your BIG-IP workflow.

F5 and OPSWAT Advanced Threat Prevention diagram
Figure 1 – F5 and OPSWAT Advanced Threat Prevention

Webroot—Gain Insight into Specific Aspects of Threats

Similarly, F5 partners with Webroot to give customers a full suite of easy-to-use defenses to keep malicious users and threats away from their networks, servers, and applications. With Webroot BrightCloud Security Services integrated into our Threat Feed Intelligence, Webroot provides leading IP reputation, real-time anti-phishing, streaming malware detection, and other services that help make BIG-IP threat defenses even more proactive. As a result, customer data and apps are more secure, and systems are more reliable and efficient.

Venafi—Improve Data Security and Risk Management

Encrypted traffic is another area where our customers enjoy the benefits of partnership. For example, we work closely with Venafi to further accelerate and scale application delivery by ensuring fast, efficient encryption certificate and key management. Venafi Trust Protection Platform makes it easy to automate the entire key and certificate lifecycle while easing the burden on your BIG-IP administrators. Specifically, Venafi eliminates the need for manual setup and ongoing key and certificate maintenance for HTTPS by automating the entire process—from first setup to ongoing validation and renewal that ensures key and certificate updates are continuously implemented. This approach mitigates the potential impacts of errors or poor security decisions and ensures that certificates don’t unknowingly expire.

We’re All in this Together

While F5 is rightfully proud of the role our products and solutions play in securing business-critical networks and delivering full-featured applications and services, we’re equally proud of the ecosystem of companies with which we engage to further benefit customers. Simply put, today’s businesses and enterprises fail without integration and interoperability, and F5 salutes all of our partners in embracing these values as we work together to help our joint customers prosper.

If you’re joining us in Boston for Agility 2018 (Aug. 13–16), please be sure to visit our security partners and the other event sponsors to learn more about how we work together to harden your defenses, help you deliver meaningful SLAs, and strengthen regulatory compliance efforts.