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Arbor DDoS vs F5 Shape Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Arbor DDoS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd)
F5 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (6th), Bot Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Arbor DDoS is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 13.1%, down 13.5% compared to last year.
F5 Shape Security, on the other hand, focuses on Fraud Detection and Prevention, holds 2.0% mindshare, down 2.1% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Fraud Detection and Prevention
 

Featured Reviews

Hamada Elewa - PeerSpot reviewer
Users have experienced comprehensive protection against DDoS threats while enjoying seamless integration
The most valuable feature of Arbor DDoS is that it is based in most of the ISPs all over the world, and Egyptian ISPs are one of them. If a customer who is getting internet connectivity from one of the ISPs has an Arbor at the end, it will be integrated with the ISP Arbor. It's some sort of closing all the cycle with Arbor DDoS, from the ISP sides and from your side as a customer. Traffic analysis with Arbor DDoS is very good; it is brilliant. They act in a different way compared to others, and the vendor support is very good. The main benefits Arbor DDoS provides to users include stopping DDoS attacks, which is the biggest nightmare for all customers.
Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability is okay and we have not encountered problems with the solution."
"The quality of the technical support provided by Arbor DDoS is premium."
"The technical support of Arbor DDoS is good."
"Arbor has a global ranking in reliability and credibility. They are very unique and can respond to a very wide scope of threats from their global deployment."
"Using standard BGP, NetFlow and SNMP ensure wide compatibility. There are also peering traffic reports that can help identify upstream peering opportunities. The ATLAS aggregation service allows us to contribute to the global DDoS data and benefit from overall trends."
"Its scalability is big. It is for large deployments of big organizations and service providers."
"It has an easy-to-understand GUI...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The feature I find most valuable is the packet capture, which beautifully shows the communication between the client and the server, identifying potential malicious activity."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
 

Cons

"The solution's IT support needs improvement."
"Arbor Pravail APS devices do not sync features or config the backup enough. This needs to be improved."
"Because we had some routers that were somewhat old, they were not integrated with Arbor. They did not support the NetFlow version that Arbor was running. That was a challenge. We had to upgrade the routers. Some backward-compatibility would be helpful."
"They also have limited sizes of the boxes. Different sizes are needed because some customers are very small while others are very big, such as ISPs, so this categorization should be available."
"With Arbor DDoS, its integration issues with other technologies or other vendors' technologies is an area of concern that could be improved."
"An improvement to Arbor DDoS would be to make evaluation licenses and virtual machines available."
"The look and feel of the management console is a little old, excessively simple. If you compare it with other solutions, the look and feel of the console is like you're using technology from five or six years ago. It doesn't show all the technology that is actually behind it. It looks like an older solution, even though it is not."
"Real-case scenarios that have taken too long to resolve or were escalated can be directly converted into articles."
"The tool's price is high."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is expensive when compared to other tools."
"Arbor's products are very expensive. Their competitors are cheap when compared with Arbor."
"Because the solutions from competitors are very different, it's not easy to compare. However, the licensing from Arbor is clear and understandable and the pricing is reasonable when looking at the market, in general."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap."
"Arbor is striking a good balance between pricing and what they deliver."
"You need to find a way to get a good offering from Arbor by negotiating a price. That is the challenge."
"As far as I know, they are the best in this sector, in DDoS protection. They know it, I know, because their service prices are too high. They provide cloud DDoS protection for ISPs, but that is also too expensive."
"We do not use the Arbor Cloud DDoS solution because it is too costly."
"The solution is moderately priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Retailer
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What do you like most about Arbor DDoS?
The quality of the technical support provided by Arbor DDoS is premium.
What makes automation distinct as an attack vector?
An aspect that sets automation apart as an attack vector is its ability to mimic legitimate user behavior and evade traditional security measures. Automated attacks can simulate human-like interact...
How does F5 Shape Security’s system work? What are its components?
One key component is the Shape Defense Engine. It sends telemetry to the Shape AI Cloud, a highly secure data system where machine learning algorithms analyze the data to detect patterns of automat...
Can F5 Shape Security protect both our web and mobile applications? Are there any specific features for mobile app protection?
F5 Shape Security can protect web apps as well. It’s a bit complicated, but goes something like this: The platform employs a JavaScript-based collection of client signals to gather data on user beh...
 

Also Known As

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT
Shape Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Xtel Communications
Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Radware, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: June 2025.
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