Akamai App & API Protector vs. F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Akamai Kona Site Defender KSD, works fine for any website or mobile application (Native/JDK), it can be used as a WAF, a rate limiting tool, or a bot management tool all in one, plus you will get all the benefits of the Akamai CDN (Content distribution network) as well

Incentivized

It is doing its job effectively, and its scalability is superb. So, if you have a mixed environment with cloud and on-premise systems to protect this product, provide a solution to the challenge. However, its management is more suited to DevOps teams rather than to the ones responsible for on-premise systems, making the management a bit more complex.

Incentivized

• Web Security
• Bot managment
• Rate Control

Incentivized

• Layer seven attacks are becoming far more common. Traditionally it was always layered three, layer four, where you get an additional firewall, but with the application layer attacks become more frequent, more popular, et cetera. So having the web application firewall protecting us, and then with the recent Log4j, that's the most recent use case when it gave us that instant level of protection whilst we remediated the Log4j that we had that and the F5 Distributed Cloud WAF was protecting us.
• I have a great relationship with the account manager, my account manager, and I think he drives the best price possible, um, for me, and I'm happy with that price.
• F5 Distributed Cloud WAF is always innovating and evolving.
• We run a very competitive proof value where we run numerous competitors against each other, and then we evaluate from that and then make the selection, and F5 Distributed Cloud WAF was the winner.

Incentivized

• Custom rules might be hard to configure
• For some cases you will need to contact the Akamai team to adjust the backend
• Interface might feel laggy if used in a non-powerful PC

Incentivized

• Better integration between different F5 solutions
• Fail over between devices feels unstable if there are thousands of objects attached to the traffic-group. Needs to be more simpler.
• We have seen issues with malicious user detection where we have used open protocols due to legacy applications, and have been caught with legitimate traffic being blocked.

Incentivized

I would continue using F5 Distributed Cloud WAF because I am highly satisfied with its robust and comprehensive features that effectively protect our applications from evolving cyber threats. The advanced AI capabilities enhance threat detection and response, providing proactive security. Additionally, the excellent customer support ensures quick resolution of any issues, making the overall experience reliable and efficient. Trust in the manufacturer’s innovation and continuous updates further motivates me to keep this solution as a core part of our security infrastructure.

Incentivized

I believe is a solution that was designed from the start to be simple and easy to use. Coming from Imperva, it simply eased the burden and complexity of managing and securing our apps on different environments (cloud and on-prem). It easy to scale and very quick to deploy (as a cloud waf should be), provide us with DevOps integrations, visibility and automatic insights from multiple events that guarantee peace of mind for us analysts and opp managers.

Incentivized

Seems no issue

Incentivized

Unnoticed slowness

Incentivized

I never contacted support for this product.

Incentivized

Online training saves me lots of time

Incentivized

Just make sure you origin servers have F5 IPs allowed.

Incentivized

This plaform has advanced threat detection technology and mitigation of this tool is also great that's why why it helps us in securing from many attacks including damages from 7 attcks, BOTS Mitigations and DDoS Protection. Also this plaform has customised security management policy to tailor security measures according to our specific needs.

Incentivized

Dont see any issue so far

Incentivized

• Fair Security investment
• An attack impact would be higher
• Support contract is not cheap

Incentivized

• This helps us quickly push out applications and security to our applications. It is so simple to perform these tasks in F5 Distributed Cloud WAF.
• We are also using the MSP side of it so we have support and are able to have F5 manage our solutions that can save us time.

Incentivized