Today's organisations are tasked to protect a growing number of attack vectors. A rising number of exploits seek to simply overwhelm servers with requests and deceptively use encryption to target networks and applications in ways that traditional products struggle to detect and defend. To better protect against emerging threats, F5 is introducing two standalone products designed to help customers quickly deploy dedicated security solutions.

These offerings will be available in the African markets served by value-added distributor, Networks Unlimited, and are set to provide organisations operating on the continent with a quick, simple remediation with essential visibility and actionable insights that eliminate industry ‘blind spots' and safeguard business assets and data.

F5 DDoS Hybrid Defender provides superior infrastructure protection by combining multilayered DDoS defence across network, session, and application layers to intelligently integrate offsite cloud scrubbing in a convenient, all-in-one form factor. This approach helps weed out illegitimate requests to keep operations and sites running smoothly.

Highlights:

· Next-generation DDoS defense with behavioural analysis to identify and mitigate attacks, machine-learning to detect evasive threats or traffic anomalies, and powerful automation capabilities to boost efficiency.

· On-demand cloud-based scrubbing in a hybrid model, redirecting volumetric attack traffic seamlessly to reduce overhead and dramatically improve network bandwidth usage.

· Unmatched application inspection for layer 7 attacks, with in-depth application threat discovery based on data stream logic, aggregative signals from HTTP, and the characteristics of TCP requests, transactions, and overall server health.

· Leading performance and fastest time-to-mitigation for attacks targeting the network, applications, and IT infrastructure.

F5 SSL Orchestrator provides critical visibility into industry blind spots created by the growing use of encryption throughout enterprise networks. The product combines cryptographic capabilities with context-aware dynamic service chaining to enhance enforcement capabilities, heighten detection capabilities, and improve network operations and orchestration.

Highlights:

· Centralised management of encryption/decryption, traffic steering, and load distribution services across all security layers to reduce TCO and improve business continuity.

· Visibility into the gaps that SSL can create for traditional security tools and overburdened firewalls, with context-based intelligence and robust proxy-level control over ciphers and protocols.

· Vastly improved insight into SSL traffic across critical points in the attack flow, helping mitigate the dangers of exploitation, callback, and data exfiltration between services (common among advanced and persistent threats).

· Native integration with a variety of popular network security and advanced threat management solutions to further reduce risk and maximise the value of existing investments.

"Today's increasingly destructive and disruptive attacks can quickly undermine traditional security solutions," says Karl Triebes, EVP of Product Development and CTO at F5. "These new appliances provide standalone functionality to quickly and comprehensively address specific industry challenges. With a breadth of cloud, software, and hardware offerings, F5 provides compelling options to integrate security throughout evolving network and application infrastructures in ways that best fit organisational priorities, compliance mandates, and customer needs."

Anton Jacobsz, MD at Networks Unlimited, adds: "These intelligent, context-based appliances focused on DDoS protection and SSL orchestration are essential in our African market, which is witnessing a significant increase in cyber attacks. When it comes to having your data compromised, you simply cannot be naïve and think your country, industry or business is bulletproof."

Availability
F5 DDoS Hybrid Defender will be available in June 2016. F5 SSL Orchestrator will be available in the third quarter of calendar year 2016. Please contact Alexa Gerber, F5 product manager at Networks Unlimited on alexa.gerber@nu.co.za for more information.