F5 Networks Delivers Comprehensive Application Security Solution with New BIG-IP® Application Security Manager™

November 6, 2007; 07:09 AM

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced a new version of its BIG-IP® Application Security Manager™ (ASM) solution. BIG-IP ASM delivers a new level of integration by further leveraging the plug-in architecture of TMOS™, the modular architecture platform for F5’s application delivery solutions. With this integration — along with manageability and feature improvements — F5 has delivered the industry’s foremost comprehensive application delivery security solution for enterprises and other organizations.

The new BIG-IP ASM delivers unprecedented security capabilities, enabling both network and security architects to manage the multiple layers of their application security environments comprehensively and transparently. In addition, BIG-IP ASM’s robust capabilities and ease-of-use make it an ideal security solution for architects seeking to safely introduce new technologies into their application delivery infrastructures, including solutions that ensure regulatory requirements for financial, e-commerce, health care, and retail industries.

“While most organizations are incorporating security into the software development lifecycle for new applications, there are still many legacy applications that organizations must protect for regulatory and compliance reasons,” said Diana Kelley, Vice President and Senior Analyst for Burton Group. “Application firewalls can help organizations provide compensating control protections for legacy and commercial applications.”

As part of F5’s integrated application delivery portfolio, BIG-IP ASM inherits unmatched performance enhancements by taking advantage of native TMOS functionalities including compression, caching, rate shaping, SSL offload, TCP content manipulation, and TCP Express. The result is the industry’s fastest and best-performing application firewall — a streamlined, integrated security solution that can easily be deployed into an end-to-end Application Delivery Network.

“With BIG-IP ASM, we were able to achieve PCI compliance and up our levels of application security simultaneously, and without sacrificing performance,” said Mark Nagiel, VP of IT and Information Security at InCharge Institute. “BIG-IP ASM is a key component of our risk management model. Because of its advanced feature set, transparent administration, and enforcement flexibility, we chose the device as our long-term, scalable solution.”

Other highlights of the new BIG-IP ASM include:

Application Intelligence – ASM’s Real Traffic Policy Builder is a revolutionary engine that creates, maintains, and updates security policies. By parsing requests and responses, ASM inspects the bi-directional flow of traffic to applications, detecting anomalies — including attacks — and adaptively tightening security policies automatically.

Convenient Deployment – ASM delivers road-tested, out-of-the-box protection for industry-standard applications, including Microsoft SharePoint, Outlook Web Access, SAP NetWeaver, Lotus Domino, and more, providing pre-packaged application fluency that alleviates the burden of manual configuration.

Comprehensive Security – With ASM’s integrated XML firewall, security architects and administrators can offload various security checks without writing additional code or deploying an XML security point solution to ensure interoperability. To complement Real Traffic Policy Builder, ASM provides multi-layer security and application protection against Denial of Service, evasion attacks, SQL injection, and other popular attacks on traditional and Web 2.0 applications, providing complete application delivery security for Layers 2–7.

“At F5, we recognize that each enterprise has specialized security requirements in addition to general application protection,” said Jason Needham, Director of Product Management at F5. “Enterprises and other organizations need a manageable, end-to-end application security solution that’s flexible enough to protect against the next generation of application attacks as well as current threats. As a result of F5’s successful integration and development efforts following the acquisition of MagniFire, we’re the only vendor that can provide administrators, architects, and developers with comprehensive, adaptable application security on a single architecture platform.”

Availability

BIG-IP Application Security Manager 9.4.2 is available now, both as a software module and a standalone device. The BIG-IP ASM module, running on BIG-IP LTM, is available on the 6400, 6800, 8400, and 8800 BIG-IP hardware platforms. The standalone version of ASM 9.4.2 is available on F5’s 4100 hardware platform.

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking. F5 provides solutions that make applications secure, fast and available for everyone, helping organizations get the most out of their investment. By adding intelligence and manageability into the network to offload applications, F5 optimizes applications and allows them to work faster and consume fewer resources. F5’s extensible architecture intelligently integrates application optimization, protects the application and the network, and delivers application reliability — all on one universal platform. Over 16,000 organizations and service providers worldwide trust F5 to keep their applications running. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington with offices worldwide. For more information, go to www.f5.com.

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