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Enable Your BIG-IP 17.1 with Defense Against Sophisticated Attacks and Data Theft

Edward O'Connell Thumbnail
Edward O'Connell
Published March 16, 2023
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Attacks on applications come in many different forms, which makes for complexity when trying to protect users and data. F5 Distributed Cloud connectors for BIG-IP 17.1 enables seamless access to enhanced F5 Distributed Cloud Services, including Bot Defense, Authentication Intelligence, Account Protection, and Client-Side Defense. (Check out the Distributed Cloud connectors in your BIG-IP 17.1 Administrator console.)

F5 recently released BIG-IP 17.1, a long-term support release, which continues to extend, enhance, and simplify application security, delivery, and automation. Existing F5 BIG-IP customers can leverage their existing deployments to augment their already powerful defenses against sophisticated attacks by deploying the Distributed Cloud technologies either through the new native integration or as iApp services-based configurations.

The new F5 Distributed Cloud connectors for BIG-IP 17.1 enable customers to easily apply cloud-based security services to application interactions directly within the BIG-IP administrative console. These security services enable application owners and security personnel to leverage market-leading anti-fraud and malicious bot security, enhancing the protections for their applications and data from automated attacks. The following F5 Distributed Cloud connectors for BIG-IP enable easy, secure integration with F5 Distributed Cloud Services, and illustrate F5’s commitment to providing simplified and holistic application security for hybrid and multi-cloud environments:

  • The F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense connector helps mitigate malicious bots in real time with the highest efficacy and near-zero false positives while maintaining access for good bots. Bots cause significant financial pain through scraping that slows performance, reselling and inventory hoarding that frustrate loyal customers, enumerating gift card codes to steal balances, creating fake accounts for fraudulent purposes, and credential stuffing–the testing of stolen credentials–that can result in account takeovers. These costly bot attacks are difficult to stop because criminals retool to bypass defenses, solving CAPTCHAs and mimicking human behavior. To stay ahead, Distributed Cloud Bot Defense uses rich signal collection and AI for unparalleled long-term efficacy.

  • The F5 Distributed Cloud Account Protection connector enables your F5 BIG-IP deployment to protect customers from account takeover while reducing login friction and increasing operational efficiency.

  • The F5 Distributed Cloud Authentication Intelligence connector uses AI to rescue known good consumers from the frustration of excessive logins and re-authentication, helping to improve customer loyalty.

  • The F5 Distributed Cloud Client-Side Defense connector enables a self-managed service that seamlessly integrates with F5 BIG-IP to protect against client-side attacks such as Magecart, digital skimming, formjacking, personally identifiable information (PII) harvesting, and other types of browser-based supply chain attacks. By providing real-time monitoring of a web application’s JavaScript libraries for malicious activities, Client-Side Defense protects consumer data from being accessed by cybercriminals and assists organizations in meeting the new PCI Security Standard Council’s 4.0 requirements.

For those with responsibility for an organization’s digital commerce, protecting these applications, users, and data is paramount to maximize business revenue and customer satisfaction, and to protect organizational reputation. The BIG-IP platform securely connects to F5 Distributed Cloud connectors to provide fast, reliable responses that serve as your core defense point against sophisticated web and mobile-based attacks. Utilizing this centralized app security empowers you to better leverage your existing internal expertise and SecOps teams with simple onboarding, ongoing deployment management, and centralized insights into sophisticated attacks that you were previously missing, allowing you to quickly adapt to the changing threat landscape. These new services amplify the robust security you already enjoy from your F5 BIG-IP platform without impacting normal operations, expanding existing infrastructure, or adding new vendors.

You can now easily access the new Distributed Cloud connectors directly in the core BIG-IP Administrative interface under “Distributed Cloud Services,” making for fast, simple setup and administration.

Please note: For BIG-IP customers who are running releases 14.x, 15.x and 16.x, there is an F5 Distributed Cloud iApp that enables connectivity to F5 Distributed Bot Defense services. You can find out more about the iApp in this DevCentral article.

To find out more about leveraging your existing BIG-IP deployment to easily add F5 Distributed Cloud Services and increase security for your apps and data, follow these links.