F5 Advanced WAF Reviews

Our clients mostly have their own applications, such as banking apps, and use F5 Advanced WAF to avoid vulnerabilities and threats on both the application layer and transport layer. 

We create web policies for their apps and configure ASM signatures to prevent vulnerabilities. After configuring the policies, I monitor logs continuously to block vulnerability attacks and assist clients in addressing any issues.

One of the things that surprised me the most about F5 devices is their compatibility with the existing infrastructure of most customers. They can be easily integrated between the main firewall and back end servers, making it a seamless addition to enhance security.

The traffic learning feature stands out as the most valuable. When an app is accessed, the log generated in F5 Advanced WAF provides suggestions on what actions to take. This feature is particularly beneficial in new vulnerability scenarios, offering guidance based on learned data. 

Additionally, I appreciate the way F5 Advanced WAF builds policies by configuring a basic policy and queuing it in learning mode. The solution learns from logs, and based on that learning, I configure ASM signatures.

The GUI interface can be confusing due to similar-looking tabs for policy building, traffic learning, and event logs. A more explanatory GUI would be beneficial. However, F5 solutions are a bit expensive compared to others, although they provide the best service and options.

I have been working with F5 Advanced WAF for around six months.

The solution is very stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

F5 Advanced WAF is very scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.

F5 support is excellent and deserves a ten out of ten. Their technical support is responsive and helpful, making the overall experience very satisfactory.

Positive

I have not worked with many other vendors as extensively as F5, but I have some knowledge of FortiWAF. FortiWAF has fewer options compared to F5, particularly in features like iRULES, which offers more flexibility for traffic management and coding.

The initial setup is not very lengthy. Once the device is on-premises, configuring and managing it is quite efficient, though the entire project from start to end may take about a month to a month and a half.

I work with a team of five to six network engineers across different cities, providing support and collaboration for client deployments.

The return on investment is quite high with F5 solutions. Customers prefer F5 for their superior service and features, despite the higher cost.

F5 is on the expensive side but offers superior solutions and options. Customers are willing to pay for the quality and features provided.

I have some knowledge of FortiWAF, but F5 provides more options, especially with features like iRULES for managing traffic.

I would recommend F5 Advanced WAF to other users. It provides excellent features, flexibility, and support.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

It protects our public entities. Its use case is very directed at a resolution of security.

It protects our environment. It protects our entities.

Identification, ease of use, and ease of modifying it to most of our needs are valuable.

There should be more ability to rate limit certain scenarios. The majority of the time, it is either on or off. For certain types of use cases, there should be the ability to rate limit, not just enable or disable.

It is a very CPU-intensive application. I understand why, but I'm hoping that they could optimize the CPU utilization a little bit better.

I have been using this solution for eight years.

It is stable.

It is very scalable for what we need. It is a public-facing service. So, everybody on the internet would be able to utilize this type of service.

We are exploring areas to increase its usage.

I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

We used other public entities for similar use cases.

It is pretty straightforward. A typical setup for these types of projects takes three months.

It is all done in-house. We do everything in-house. 

In its maintenance, I and other people are involved. The daily operations, which include modifying policies, are up to the individual application owners because they understand their applications a lot better than I or our standard operating team would. So, their usage might go higher than mine.

We have very much seen an ROI. It protects our revenue stream.

The way we deployed it, I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing.

I would advise doing your homework. It could be very simplified, or it could be very complex, but definitely, do your homework with the owners of the application because they understand the application more than certain people.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Primarily, the Advanced WAF sits behind our network perimeter. It centralizes traffic flow to our network, filters requests, and identifies any potential threats.

It helps us detect threats or malicious requests coming into the network, protecting it from being hacked. It helps guard against issues like cross-site scripting (XSS) and other similar threats.

So, F5 Advanced WAF helped mitigate bot traffic for our web applications.

Moreover, my experience is that it's pretty straightforward to use. Our firewall team handles requests through a change management tool within scheduled change windows. However, F5 is our only firewall solution.

It's a valuable tool to protect web servers exposed to the external network. With numerous web applications running on Apache or IIS servers, the F5 Advanced WAF's threat detection capabilities protect the network before traffic reaches those servers.

It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements. 

The self-service aspect could be improved. 

The user interface (UI) also seems a bit outdated. Making it more user-friendly would be beneficial.

We've been using it for approximately five to six years.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. It is a stable product. 

It is pretty good. I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten.

Ssometimes, the way our enterprise handles change requests might slow things down because of the internal rules and processes. But these changes, once approved, do take effect immediately on the firewall itself. 

We have a change window twice a week for these requests. I don't think the limitation is with the firewall itself; it's more about our internal procedures.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because I have seen that not too much customization is required during setup. The change requests we submit are usually clear and easily applied. 

Overall, the policies work well, and the threat detection is good. It catches deviations and anomalies effectively.

From a recommendation standpoint, it's a fairly easy tool to use. However, you definitely need some knowledge about scripting, OWASP fundamentals, threat detection, and general cybersecurity principles to get the most out of it.

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. 

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.

We use it for ASM and ATF. I am working at the PCI company, and I am a manager of F5. I work with F5 WAF and ASF.

Currently, I use version 50.1.4, and I'm going to update to the new version, 50.144.1.

I like the solution for ASM. There is an online update certification, but access is locked so we couldn't use it.

I would like to see a better interface and better documentation compatibility with other products. It's more complicated with OWASP.

F5 has a learning university, but it's very complex. I teach other people, and it can be confusing with the different versions of software. It's very hard to support that.

I've been working with this solution for four years.

The product is very stable. It is a PCI company, so there are 10,000-12,000 people using the solution. 

My TLS connection is unlimited, so I have a lot of clients because of internet payments. All of the internet payments are behind the ASM for the F5.

It's scalable and very easy to manage.

I worked with FortiWeb for a few years. It's a good product, but it's not very good for a big company. So we decided to migrate to F5.

The initial setup is from a configuration utility.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

In APM or IT intelligence, it's the best. But in the ASM model, it's not as good as a 40G for Palo Alto.

F5 Advanced WAF is used for the protection of applications from current web threats, including DDoS attacks. It provides a comprehensive security solution that incorporates different protection levels.

The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its extensive set of capabilities for application protection, including DDoS prevention, and its ability to work with Pentesters and external scanners to observe user activity and eliminate false positives. This comprehensive approach to application security enables an organization to protect its web applications from diverse web threats effectively.

All features of Advanced WAF offer numerous functions, which means tuning configuration is not simple. It's a powerful tool yet can be complex for new users. Future updates should ensure not to break the current state, as users are concerned the new version may not meet current standards.

I have been using F5 Advanced WAF for more than ten years.

F5 Advanced WAF is considered a stable product, and I would rate it as ten out of ten in terms of stability.

The solution's scalability is solid, with the option to increase capabilities through licensing and adding modules in the virtual edition. However, it requires additional expenses, so I would rate it as a seven or eight out of ten.

F5 provides one of the best technical supports, though there have been a few cases where customers were dissatisfied due to response speed. However, in general, their support is highly efficient and knowledgeable.

Positive

In the past, Imperva was the leading solution, however, now F5 is preferred as it offers a superior solution according to customer feedback.

Deploying the solution, including initial configuration, licensing, addressing, and enabling WAF, could take one to three hours. However, for a comprehensive setup, considering external factors and optimizations, the process could take up to a month.

I handle installations and other related aspects by myself, without any additional help.

There are numerous benefits for end customers, as a secure application helps prevent potential breaches and ensures the safety of customers' data, especially in sensitive sectors like banking.

F5 Advanced WAF is not cheap. That said, it offers numerous features and is known as one of the best solutions in its segment. It provides significant value by offering comprehensive protection for high-stakes environments.

I work with other vendors, such as Broadcom, Qualys, BeyondTrust, and Trend Micro, depending on the customer's needs and the vision of my company.

I would fully recommend F5 Advanced WAF for its feature-rich offerings and high detection rate of threats. I rate it a ten out of ten as it is one of the best solutions available.