F5 Advanced WAF Reviews

The primary use case is to secure the organization's applications from web-based attacks, securing both web applications and APIs.

The product is used to secure web applications and has the ability to use API templates and bot protection features, such as blocking requests or presenting CAPTCHA pages to end users. We also implement Swagger files for API security and use custom profiles for device ID threshold management.

The main improvement needed is related to IP intelligence. Once we start receiving traffic from repetitive IP addresses, we have to report it to the SOC team to block it at the layer four level. Users would like to have an additional IP intelligence license to handle this within WAF itself without needing to engage with the SOC team.

The solution has been used for three years.

Customer service and support depend on the level of support subscribed to, such as silver or platinum support, which determines the response time.

Positive

Deploying the solution involves an application learning and blocking phase. The process includes collecting application data, creating policies, and applying them to lower testing environments like QA or dev before moving to UAT and production. The learning phase is used to handle false positives and fine-tune the policies before going live.

The in-house team manages and supports the WAF, handling incidents reported by end users when legitimate traffic is blocked. They update the policies to prevent the recurrence of similar blocks.

The pricing and support service levels affect response times from customer service, depending on whether the support level is silver, platinum, etc.

We are exploring cloud-based solutions like Azure WAF and AWS WAF.

I rate F5 Advanced WAF an eight out of ten.

In Pakistan, the banking and financial sector requires F5 WAF solutions. I worked with other companies that had more clients, but my current company is a start-up. We have Palo Alto business, but we're trying to get F5 business.

F5 products are highly stable, top-notch solutions, and we have also the expertise to deploy and design the F5 and Palo Alto product lines. I have more than 10 years of experience with F5 and Palo Alto. I have deployed around F5 products for around seven or eight customers of F5.

F5 should consider adding network detection and response.

We have been using F5 solutions for two years, including load balancers and Advanced WAF.

Advanced WAF is highly stable.

F5 products are scalable, and they have an excellent R&D department. Their product is constantly maturing.

F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good.

Advanced WAF is a difficult product for new users, but it's not too challenging if you have experience. Nevertheless, F5 products are generally considered to be hard to deploy. 

F5's hardware product line is called BIG-IP, and they have many software licenses for IP DNS, Advanced WAF, APM, anti-spam, etc. We have around 10 licenses.

I rate F5 Advanced WAF 10 out of 10. I would highly recommend the entire F5 product line.

Our company installs the solution for customers who require more features than are available with FortiADC. 

One of our customers is a bank that has API for both web and mobile applications. We use the solution to load balance and provide protection for the API requests that come from customers to the application server. With more than 200,000 DNS requests per second, the solution's advanced features are the best fit to the customer's needs. 

The solution uses AI to protect against botnet attacks. 

The solution has a vCMP-like feature that allows you to visualize more than two  TMOS at the same time on your hardware. This feature is not available with other solutions. 

The solution should include protection against web page attacks like what is available in FortiWeb. 

The solution should integrate with Kubernetes. I believe there is a new ADC planned for the end of 2022 that will accomplish this goal. 

I have been using the solution for six years. 

The solution is super stable with extra chassis space. 

We sometimes use solution to its maximum capacity and it is still stable with no crashes. 

The solution is super scalable. 

FortiADC is a good solution for small or mid-sized companies but F5 can handle the largest companies. 

Across all of our customers, we have more than a million users at the same time with no issues.

I have not needed technical support. 

The initial setup is more complex than FortiADC and takes about twice the amount of time. 

Our company provides setup and deployment for our customers. 

The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment. I believe each device costs around $20,000 and includes a three-year license. 

I rate the cost a ten out of ten. 

We do not consider other options for large companies but do install FortiADC for small to mid-sized companies. 

It is important to know your network and assess your needs such as dust protection, VAT, and load balancing before deciding if FortiADC or F5 are the best solution.  

F5 is expensive so is only appropriate for large companies with high-level use. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Our client has an internally hosted website, and they wanted us to help them in reducing the attack surface in their web application, so we use F5 Advanced WAF for that purpose.

The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its ability to have a pool of resources that can distribute your traffic, and that is a plus for me. My company tried to look into a competitor, Imperva, but it was lacking that capability, so F5 Advanced WAF outperforms Imperva.

For me, an area for improvement in F5 Advanced WAF is the reporting as it isn't so clear. The vendor needs to work on the reporting capability of the solution.

What I'd like to see in the next release of F5 Advanced WAF is threat intelligence to protect your web application, particularly having that capability out-of-the-box, and not needing to pay extra for it, similar to what's offered in FortiWeb, for example, any request that originates from a malicious IP will be blocked automatically by FortiWeb. F5 Advanced WAF should have the intelligence for blocking malicious IPs, or automatically blocking threats included in the license, instead of making it an add-on feature that users have to pay for apart from the standard licensing fees.

I've been using F5 Advanced WAF for about two years.

F5 Advanced WAF is a super stable solution. I've not been aware of any issues with the solution whenever my company uses it.

How scalable F5 Advanced WAF is would depend on what resources your client or the virtual server has. It all boils down to the allocated resources. For me, F5 Advanced WAF is pretty much scalable in terms of the resources I've assigned.

I contact the technical support team of F5 Advanced WAF from time to time, and I would rate support eight out of ten. What the support team needs to improve is the SLA, particularly the speed of response.

Positive

In terms of setting up F5 Advanced WAF, what was challenging was the network part, but the rest wasn't that difficult. It took almost two weeks to complete the setup for F5 Advanced WAF.

We implemented F5 Advanced WAF ourselves.

It's hard to tell if the customer got ROI from F5 Advanced WAF because it's based on the initial deployment and approach. It would've been just a matter of time before the customer enjoyed ROI from the solution. My company never experienced a serious incident with the use of F5 Advanced WAF for the customer, so my assumption is at some point, the customer is realizing the ROI.

The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is comparable to a Rolls-Royce. Its price is a bit high when you compare it with other vendors. F5 Advanced WAF is a bit expensive. The customer was on a three-year plan and it was around $560,000.

We evaluated Imperva, but F5 Advanced WAF was able to outperform Imperva.

I'm an administrator of F5 Advanced WAF for my customer, so I'm more of a user. I'm not a partner or reseller of F5. I'm just a consultant and administrator.

From what I recall, during the time of deployment, my company was using version 15 of F5 Advanced WAF, but I'm not so sure if there's been a new version or an upgrade after that version.

My company has less than ten users/administrators of F5 Advanced WAF.

My advice for people who want to implement the solution, though I might be biased because I've not used other solutions, but as far as I am concerned, F5 Advanced WAF is one of the most stable solutions I've ever used, so it's good to implement.

My rating for F5 Advanced WAF is nine out of ten.

We are using F5 Advanced WAF to protect certain environments. It protects us against everything, such as botnets, web scraping attacks, and foreign entities attacks. It allows us to hone in on exactly the area that we need to focus on. It's a web-based firewall.

F5 Advanced WAF has benefited our company by protecting us against revenue loss. It's prevented hacks that would have taken us offline or caused us a loss of revenue in different areas.

The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the easy identification of events and customization. We can pinpoint our settings.

F5 Advanced WAF could improve resource usage, it is CPU intensive. Additionally, adding automated remediation would be a benefit. For example, an easy button alerts us of the events that are occurring, and what we want to do at the time. An automated approach where somebody could be alerted very quickly. Instead of going and reconfiguring everything, an automated approach is what I'm looking at.

I have been using F5 Advanced WAF for approximately five years.

We can scale the F5 Advanced WAF very easily. We could configure it to be a canned solution or a customized solution. It goes from canned to full customization to what we need.

After we sized F5 Advanced WAF just right and identified the correct way to configure it, it's very stable.

The solution is not being extensively used.

We have used other solutions previously and in parallel.

Generally, F5 Advanced WAF initial setup is straightforward. However, our environment was more complex and it took us a little more time to customize the solution to where we needed it to be. Additionally, the customization didn't rectify everything. We had to do customization to a certain event to prevent attacks that it wasn't catching, but that might not necessarily be the solutions' fault. It could be more of our setup than the solution's fault and not being able to run the latest version or the newer version could be more of a limitation on our ability to put it in the right place.

The whole implementation to have the solution run at the level we wanted it to take approximately five months.

Our company's environment is one that we can't put a canned solution in front of. Our environment, cannot have a canned solution that might fit everybody else because of how customized this environment is. It does need a lot of tuning to meet our environment's requirements.

I rate the initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.

We did the implementation of this solution in-house. We have a very small group that is managing it. However, because it's for external users it's not a company use solution. Managing it, it's a very small subset of users that will manage the solution and the environment behind it. It is for external customers only.

We have received a return on investment by using F5 Advanced WAF which has saved us from losing revenue.

I rate the return of investment from F5 Advanced WAF a four out of five.

My advice to others would be to define the parameters well in the beginning, and then they will be fine. They could define it as a regular canned solution and go from there, instead of working it as not a canned solution. Define the environment and what you need to protect, that way you can build a base protection profile that you could deploy elsewhere instead of building the policy to the environment first because then customizing cannot be deployed easily.

I rate F5 Advanced WAF an eight out of ten.

We are using F5 Advanced WAF for the applications that we are publishing mainly for intrusion prevention and proxy features.

The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the overall capabilities, there is not a comparable solution on the market.

F5 Advanced WAF could improve the reporting. It's a bit difficult to populate, them. If you're not so familiar with the functions, such as where to find the logs and other settings.

In a future release, it would be beneficial to have a DNS boost feature.

I have been using F5 Advanced WAF for approximately five years.

I rate the stability of F5 Advanced WAF a ten out of ten.

We have approximately 300 users using this solution in my organization.

I rate the scalability of F5 Advanced WAF a nine out of ten.

I was previously using NGINX App Protect and we switched to F5 Advanced WAF because the GUI was better.

The full implementation of the solution took approximately eight hours. There are sections of the configuration at can be difficult.

We used a third party to do the implementation.

I rate F5 Advanced WAF an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for load balancing and web application firewall (WAF) balancing. We operate in a data center and use it for web application security and services.

The solution provides strong web security, particularly against web attacks, and has effective bot detection that helps reduce bot attacks.

Web attack signatures are very important for detecting web attacks. The bot detection feature is also crucial in reducing bot attacks.

The product could be more user-friendly, particularly the user interface for administrators. Additionally, configuration can be quite complex and needs improvement to be less complex.

I've been using it for almost three years.

The product is very stable. From one to ten, I would rate its stability at a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. We use it for multiple customers and data centers, and I would rate its scalability as nine.

The customer service is good. That siad, sometimes it takes too long to reach the right person. I would rate their effectiveness as an eight.

Positive

I am familiar with Citrix NetScaler and F5.

The initial setup was not too challenging. Post-initial configurations can be complex.

Two to three engineers are typically involved in maintenance operations.

I don't know the exact pricing. It is not the cheapest yet not the most expensive. It depends on needs, budget, and vision.

I have experience with Citrix solutions.

I recommend this product to others.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the solution for load balancing.

They should improve the capability, and then they should work on the virtualization of NGINX. Currently, most environments are virtualized. F5 Advanced WAF will not be able to protect it.

I have been using F5 Advanced WAF as a reseller for 5 years.

Technical support is good but not enough. It takes a lot of time to get support.

Neutral

The initial setup is not so easy nor not so complex. There is a learning phase, and there are policies to apply. It complies with regulations. Recently, we used it for Formula One, and it proved very effective.

ROI is covered in one year. You can see how it protects and mitigates damages in the network.

The product is not so expensive. It depends on the assets.

There are other solutions for data loss prevention, such as Symantec and IP solutions. There are options available for DNS blocking. While these solutions may specialize in certain aspects, They offer comprehensive coverage across various areas. Each vendor specializes in different aspects, but F5 Advanced WAF excels in its particular domain.

I recommend the solution. Most of the environment is going to virtualization.

Overall, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.