Application
delivery networking (ADN) specialist F5 Networks announced enhancements to its
application and data security solutions, which provide customers with security
strategies to prevent loss of service and data. F5's Big-IP version 11 software—along
with Big-IP Application Security Manager, Access Policy Manager Global Traffic
Manager (GTM) and Edge Gateway—delivers a unified platform that helps protect
Web 2.0 applications and data, secure DNS infrastructures, and establish
centralized application access and policy control.
With
F5's Web application firewall, the Application Security Manager (ASM),
organizations can protect interactive Web 2.0 applications, such as a real-time
stock site that continuously updates pricing information. Big-IP ASM secures
the application and displays an alert in the event of a policy violation. The
alert, in the form of a blocking page, includes a support ID so the user can
contact the network administrator to resolve the issue.
With
the APM, administrators receive detailed information about users, applications
and the network to create network and application access policies—and the
solution gives them a single point of control from which to enforce those
policies globally. Big-IP v11 continues to focus on F5's platform for a dynamic
data center, which is designed to enable small to medium-size businesses (SMBs)
to deploy high-performance, scalable services on demand while keeping
applications and data secure.
The
platform's management and reporting capabilities allow administrators can track
information, such as who is online and when, what type of device and network
they are using, and which applications and other resources they are accessing,
while DNS Express offloads existing DNS servers and absorbs the flood of illegitimate
requests during attacks.
"The
most significant breaches of late have been through exploiting Web
applications. Web application firewalls have seen great advances, but
single-layer solutions are no longer enough to fend off today's sophisticated attacks,"
said Greg Young, research vice president at IT analytics firm Gartner.
"It's vital for organizations to take a dedicated approach to security—one
that protects both the network and the applications."
With
v11, Big-IP GTM also integrates IP anycast, enabling queries to be received by
multiple global traffic management devices that use the same IP address. This
functionality provides linear performance scalability for GTM and DNS services
with each F5 device that is added. ASM will be available as a virtual edition
(VE), allowing administrators to test applications in virtualized and cloud
environments before deploying them in production. ASM VE also automatically
updates all synced pool members whenever policy changes occur.
"The
latest rash of security attacks is catching many organizations by surprise
because they mistakenly believe their siloed security solutions, such as
network firewalls or IPS systems, offer enough protection," said Karl
Triebes, CTO and senior vice president of product development at F5.
"While the attacks themselves cannot be prevented, most of the security
breaches that result from these attacks can unquestionably be stopped.
Defending against such multilayer attacks requires an integrated approach that
combines network security, application security and access control. This type
of strategy will be even more critical as organizations begin to move their
applications and data into the cloud."
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