on 07-Mar-2016 15:14
I am sure you are aware, the business computing environment is evolving. From all of us and the multitude of devices we now carry and interact with, along with the various ways we access information…to all of the applications and the interdependency among those applications that we request information from…to the infrastructure needed to secure those applications and information being delivered to us. Maintaining security throughout is a challenge.
In a business environment, security is all about risk: Assessment, analysis, management and mitigation. The many IT security trends like IoT, cloud, device proliferation, disappearing perimeter, and so forth are all potential risks to the business. To reduce their risk, organizations need to ensure they can scale to meet the global workforce’s and customer’s data demand; they need to secure their data from targeted attacks, unauthorized access, inadvertent leakage or to comply with regulatory rules; and they need to keep their operational infrastructure simple and efficient.
The BIG-IP platform offers the scale and capacity to meet the deluge, the full proxy security to protect the applications and infrastructure and the operational efficiency to consolidate functions within an application centric security model. The BIG-IP platform is a full proxy architecture – establishing a TCP connection with the client to the BIG-IP and a separate TCP connection from the BIG-IP to the resources themselves. It is able to apply policies on both ends, anywhere along the stack. This allows organizations to inspect, manipulate or simply drop traffic – on the way in or on the way out - if it does not adhere to the policy. Plus, iRules extensibility gives you the power to do almost anything with the traffic.
BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is a stateful, full-proxy, ICSA-certified firewall and brings additional network firewall capabilities at a fine granular level allowing administrators to easily protect their infrastructure and understand what types of attacks are infiltrating the network. Logging and reporting are built-in. BIG-IP AFM can be added to any BIG-IP platform and can help reduce those business risks.
Bringing together security and deep application fluency, BIG-IP AFM delivers the most effective network-level security for enterprises and service providers alike. Whether on-premises or in the cloud, BIG-IP AFM tracks the state of network sessions, maintains application awareness, and mitigates threats based on attack details that most traditional network firewalls simply do not have. It helps you respond to threats quickly and with a full understanding of your security posture. In addition, AFM protects your organization from the most aggressive DDoS attacks before they ever reach your data center.
F5 DevCentral has a whole AFM series coming your way over the next few weeks! The schedule includes:
Stay tuned for more insight on how to protect your critical infrastructure.
ps