F5 Distributed Cloud Secure MCN: Deploy Infra, Connect & Secure Apps Everywhere

Introduction

Businesses and applications no longer fit in a single data center or even use just one public cloud provider. The need and demand to have apps run faster and in an increasing capacity is contributing to development to sprawl, and in many cases using services across multiple different cloud providers. The need to connect, deliver, and secure apps and their data has never been greater.

Admins not only need to stitch together the different services of an app, they also need to secure it while keeping in mind any requirements for data privacy both regionally and globally. Modern apps comprised of dozens of microservices sprawl multiple clusters, data centers, and even cloud providers. This isn’t managed by one team but by a multiple of teams in modern organizations, including by different personas – NetOps, DevOps, SecOps, and even cloud architects.

Secure Multicloud networking with F5 Distributed Cloud (F5 XC) connects apps and microservices across clusters and in multiple cloud or edge sites. F5 expands the traditional definition of multicloud networking by emphasizing the importance of app security in hybrid and multicloud environments, not only L3 network connectivity and security between public clouds.

F5’s App Delivery Fabric securely connects app services across distributed edge and cloud sites. Conventional solutions are complex, require multiple vendors, and are proven to slow down app release cycles.

F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP allows admins to uniformly secure their apps with Customer Edge (CE) deployments in hybrid and multicloud environments. Apps that can leverage security services delivered locally at the edge as opposed to backhauling services from centralized locations in the cloud.

Distributed Cloud Secure MCN for App Security & Connectivity

Using F5 XC, Secure MCN to connect, deliver, and secure apps is straight forward:

F5 XC MCN Network Connect deploys CE’s to every edge/site
F5 XC MCN App Connect delivers app services
F5 XC WAAP & API Protection uniformly secures all app’s locally at each CE
Performance & Security Dashboards provide actionable observability. Mitigate/block security events and attacks directly in the dashboard.

In the densely packed 3-minute demo below, learn how F5 XC tackles the problem of uniformly securing, delivering, and observing a financial app that sprawls multiple network architectures due to a business acquisition. Security services are delivered locally at each customer edge site as opposed to being sourced regionally and from the cloud. The following key use-cases are outlined in this demo:

Consistent Web App & API Protection (#WAAP) Security in #Distributed Environments.
Seamless App-to-App Connectivity across clouds with a reduction of duplicative operational overhead.

➡️ The following technical article with attached walk-through guide and automation framework in GitHub shows how to build the solution illustrated in the video above.

Conclusion

By providing connectivity exclusively at the app layer, networking resources are inherently restricted, eliminating the problem of conventional solutions requiring complex and multiple vendor products, ultimately speeding up app release cycles.

Secure MCN Article Series

The following series of articles provides detail on when and how to use each specific Secure MCN feature. Hands-on workflow guides for configuring Secure MCN features in the Distributed Cloud console and tools to replicate and automate the setup using GitHub actions and Terraform scripts.

Secure MCN Intro: Deploy Infra, Connect & Secure Apps Everywhere
Secure MCN Part 1: Using Distributed Application Security Policies in Secure Multicloud Networking Customer Edge Sites
Secure MCN Part 2: The App Delivery Fabric with Secure Multicloud Networking
Secure MCN Part 3: The Secure Network Fabric with Multicloud Network Segmentation & Private Provider Network Connectivity