F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Score9 out of 10

136 Reviews and Ratings

What is F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)?

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF leverages F5's Advanced WAF technology, delivering WAF-as-a-Service and combining signature- and behavior-based protection for web applications. It acts as an intermediate proxy to inspect application requests and responses to block and mitigate a broad spectrum of risks stemming from the OW ASP Top 10, persistent and coordinated threat campaigns, bots, and layer 7 DoS.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)

1 / 2

#1 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

40.9%

9 installations of 22

“It definitively improved the security and efficacy in our internal systems”
— Devops, Euronet (5001-10,000 employees)

#2 most frequent

Information

13.6%

3 installations of 22

“More controlled applications and simplified management<br><br>Aplicaciones mas controladas y gestion simplificada”
— Dir.Comercial, Veriopoint HN (11-50 employees)

#3 most frequent

Retail Trade

9.1%

2 installations of 22

Pros

Robust Layer 7 DDoS protection
Easy configuration and deployment for security policies
Effective prevention of security incidents and data breaches

Cons

Limited AI and automation for advanced rule setup and detection
Complex user interface and dashboard navigation
Initial configuration and deployment can require extensive knowledge

Julie Pierce View profile

SOC Engineer in Information Technology at Quantum Flairs (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The big problem it mainly solves for us is zero day and unknown attack vectors. Right now every customer facing app and all our internal admin portals run behind F5 Distributed Cloud WAF. We've also wired it into our SIEM and SOAR tools to enrich alerts with traffic metadata and auto-initiate playbooks.

Pros

Identifying exposure risks
Mitigating bot and automation abuse
The superb dynamic inspection capabilities

Cons

Policy testing in pre production still requires some finesse. Maybe a sandbox environment with traffic replay built in would go a long way.

Return on Investment

The biggest gain for us was speed. Before F5 Distributed Cloud WAF, onboarding a new app to our WAF stack meant manual rule tuning, traffic sampling and regression testing. Right now, we spin up a service, tag it with the right policy and its ready (production ready) within hours

Alternatives Considered

Cloudflare

Other Software Used

Splunk SOAR, ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Operations Platform, Atlassian Jira

Kuro San View profile

IT Consultant in Information Technology at CSIT (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

To secure, monitor and manage traffic in the web applications and APIs.
To address problems like manual and slow response to threats, DDOS, and applications and API security risks.
Scope of use case includes securing enterprise web apps, providing security, metering, and routing at API gateways.

Pros

API protection
Real-time analytics and threat Intel
Easy deployment

Cons

To reduce cost for small businesses
To reduce learning curve for basic use case
To have a wider community support

Return on Investment

Increases response time to threats using ML-based detection, auto-mitigation, and fast policy updates.
Protects against OWASP bot attacks, and 0-day vulnerabilities.

Alternatives Considered

Azure Web Application Firewall

Other Software Used

Cloudflare Zero Trust Services

Avadhesh Washisth

Sr Infra Admin in Information Technology at Nets (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using this product in one of our project & it’s really best user experience & working fine.

Pros

Real time bot detection
Device finger printing
Automatically mitigates malicious traffic
API Security

Cons

Complexity of policy configuration
Rule visibility
Pricing transparency

Return on Investment

Reduced risk of data breaches
Application availability
Lower total cost

Alternatives Considered

(EOL) Cisco CloudCenter

Other Software Used

Tenable Nessus

Chi Wai Hui

Lecturer in Corporate at Kaplan (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have legacy application which does not have easy solution to protect. F5 Distributed Cloud WAF makes our life easier.

Pros

Easy to understand rules
Logs to enable troubleshooting

Cons

Return on Investment

It provides overall security to all my apps

Usability

Verified User

Technician in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This product gives us the ability to protect our web applications from attacks from the internet. This will help strengthen the overall security posture of our organization.

Pros

Protect against malicious attacks
Give us visibility into vulnerabilities associated with our cload applications
Provide our blue teams with valuable threat insights.

Cons

More streamlined advanced AI capabilities. Sometimes the AI fails to provide answers.
More simplified less cluttered screens and menus. Too many modules and windows to navigate through. Consider reducing the complexity of the overall application.

Return on Investment

Mitigation of potentially deadly attacks.
Greater confidence in our web facing apps and their associated data security and integrity
Increased availability of our systems

Alternatives Considered

NetScaler

Other Software Used

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, SentinelOne Singularity, Proofpoint Advanced Threat Protection, IBM Security QRadar EDR, BlueCat Integrity (Address Manager + DNS/DHCP Server)

Cloudflare

Akamai App & API Protector

Imperva Application Firewall

Fastly Edge Cloud Platform

F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)

What is F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Most Frequent Users

Finance and Insurance

Information

Retail Trade