Forum Discussion

Joe_Brandon's avatar
Joe_Brandon
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
Mar 23, 2022

F5 AFM as Main Network Firewall

Hi Everyone, I am asking this question because i want to migrate lots of firewalls and have very nice experience with BIG-IQ management center. I have an odd question about AFM. is there any chance...
security
  • Sebastiansierra's avatar
    Sebastiansierra
    Mar 23, 2022

    Hi Joe,

    AFM is a data center firewall, not a perimetral firewall, and in other architectures, it can be used as a DDOS for L3 and L4 protection, Thinking in AFM as a perimetral or UTM is probably a wrong approach.

    The current Advanced Firewalls has a lot of features that AFM does not as:
    Visibility into the application activity at a user level.
    User-based Analysis, Reporting, and Forensics.
    Malware and Virus Protection.
    Cloud packet analysis.
    Visibility into your applications, web traffic, threats, and data patterns.

    And many more that AFM as a perimetral firewall doesn´t have, in my point of view is not the most sophisticated and secure.

    Regards.

    Sebastián.

Sebastiansierra's avatar
Sebastiansierra
Icon for MVP rankMVP
Mar 23, 2022

Hi Joe,

AFM is a data center firewall, not a perimetral firewall, and in other architectures, it can be used as a DDOS for L3 and L4 protection, Thinking in AFM as a perimetral or UTM is probably a wrong approach.

The current Advanced Firewalls has a lot of features that AFM does not as:
Visibility into the application activity at a user level.
User-based Analysis, Reporting, and Forensics.
Malware and Virus Protection.
Cloud packet analysis.
Visibility into your applications, web traffic, threats, and data patterns.

And many more that AFM as a perimetral firewall doesn´t have, in my point of view is not the most sophisticated and secure.

Regards.

Sebastián.