Senior Network Security Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Apr 28, 2025
My overall experience with F5 Silverline Managed Services is positive. I would rate it nine out of ten. While I have not seen any AI integrations yet, I am hopeful that they are working towards AI features.
Design & Delivery Senior Network Security Architect at Qiddiya Investment Company
Real User
Top 10
Feb 17, 2025
For comparison, I prefer F5 over Fortinet because of its simplicity in operation and administration. I have been working with F5 for about ten years, and its support is professional. Overall, I would rate F5 Silverline Managed Services at nine out of ten.
As a customer, if we need more control, then we should choose F5 ASM. We use multiple applications and products. We use the tool for corporate applications because it fulfils our requirements. I will recommend the solution. If it fulfils your requirement, you can definitely go ahead and use it. Overall, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
Assistant Manager Application Security Team at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 13, 2023
I am a user of the product. I'm not an implementor. I cannot choose which product to use, I just optimize the product that is provided to me by my company. That's why I use F5. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is an add-on for on-prem DDoS protection. If, for example, you are using Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) on-premise, F5 Silverline Managed Services will serve as additional layer of protection when you are under attack. It has a hybrid deployment structure using both on-prem and cloud technology. F5 Silverline Managed Services' scrubbing and mitigation is done in-cloud, so there are no new versions. Their soc team does the manual mitigations in the cloud in their scrubbing center. F5 Silverline Managed Services provides industry-standard DDoS protection. It is not missing anything that any other vendor would be offering in that regard. As a client, you want to have a solution that will successfully defend you from volumetric attacks from the internet, and F5 Silverline Managed Services does that. It also offers standard reporting. It shows you how hard you have been hit and how mitigation kicked in and what it did. There is no universal, one-size-fits-all solution in this field, but when a customer has a lot of public services – they provide a web application or API – F5 Silverline Managed Services is the way to go for them.
Learn what your peers think about F5 Silverline Managed Services. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
You should know what you're actually blocking. A lot of customers move to WAF or AWAF because they were told to do that, but they need to identify what they're actually looking to inspect. For example, one of the clients I worked with did not understand the differences in capabilities between a next-generation firewall and a WAF. When I say WAF, I am talking about AWAF, not the previous generation WAF. No one considers that anymore. People who try to put WAF and think that they are secure are not really secure. There is still a fine grain of security that you need on a next-generation firewall. For example, if I inject a payload, I'm going to have HTTPS traffic that I pass on to WAF. If I do not do my SSL termination and just inspect the remaining stuff, such as headers, WAF is basically useless. If you're using a WAF solution like F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, one thing it does really well is the orchestration part. It can terminate your SSL and do the encryption. Basically, it may make your stream decrypted via texts, inspect every element of it, decrypt it back, and then send it. As a security consultant, I would add another next-generation firewall behind F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. I will make sure that I do a service chaining, and every single stream or packet that is decrypted is again routed via a next-generation firewall to do IPS. This is because your WAF cannot do IPS. It is not its major strength; it is a firewall capability. Let's say you have a website where you upload files, and you are going to upload a file that probably has some malicious code that could be executed. When you upload it, it is going to sit on your system. How do you know that a file that is attached to a website is not malicious? A WAF generally doesn't take this up. That's where a combination of WAF and firewall comes into the picture. It's about defining and ensuring what is your load and how many applications you want to protect. Do you really have the skills to manage those policies in-house? If you don't have really good engineers who look at the policies and manage these boxes, then it is better to go for managers like Silverline. If you have good hands on the ground, then use an Advanced WAF in your data center. Some companies might not need on-premises deployments because they might be using a cloud. In that case, run this on the cloud. You could have virtual licenses or virtual machines running on the cloud, or you could use Silverline. If you're more security passionate, then you probably will have to have a Silverline for it and then another WAF within your cloud. Again, there's no one way to do it. It depends on your network, but do not rely on one product because every product has its limitations. I would easily rate F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. I won't give it an eight because I haven't tested it for a longer period.
Assistant Manager Application Security Team at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Apr 2, 2020
We just renewed our license and will be continuing to use this product. Overall, this is a good security solution, but there is no such thing as a perfect appliance in IT. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Real User
Feb 17, 2020
I would rate the F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall an eight out of ten. Pricing is the reason why I wouldn't give it a ten. There's really no 10 I think in the market. They always have something that needs to improve or upgrade.
Technical Product Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Jul 7, 2019
If you are looking for web security and don't have any solution, just try it. I don't think the solution needs too much more. Sometimes you try to build too much and you make things worse. They should just take what they have right now and continuously improve it to make it better. With caching and security, everything so far is fine. I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.
F5's Silverline Managed Services is a SaaS solution delivering DDoS protection, managed Web Application Firewall (WAF) services, and managed Shape Security Fraud and Anti-bot solutions.
Silverline services include 24x7 access to F5's Security Operations Center (SOC). F5's expert security professionals use F5 products with state-of-the-art security tools to ensure the best protection possible. As an add-on to Silverline DDoS or WAF services, Silverline Threat Intelligence integrates dynamic...
My overall experience with F5 Silverline Managed Services is positive. I would rate it nine out of ten. While I have not seen any AI integrations yet, I am hopeful that they are working towards AI features.
For comparison, I prefer F5 over Fortinet because of its simplicity in operation and administration. I have been working with F5 for about ten years, and its support is professional. Overall, I would rate F5 Silverline Managed Services at nine out of ten.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
As a customer, if we need more control, then we should choose F5 ASM. We use multiple applications and products. We use the tool for corporate applications because it fulfils our requirements. I will recommend the solution. If it fulfils your requirement, you can definitely go ahead and use it. Overall, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
I am a user of the product. I'm not an implementor. I cannot choose which product to use, I just optimize the product that is provided to me by my company. That's why I use F5. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is an add-on for on-prem DDoS protection. If, for example, you are using Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) on-premise, F5 Silverline Managed Services will serve as additional layer of protection when you are under attack. It has a hybrid deployment structure using both on-prem and cloud technology. F5 Silverline Managed Services' scrubbing and mitigation is done in-cloud, so there are no new versions. Their soc team does the manual mitigations in the cloud in their scrubbing center. F5 Silverline Managed Services provides industry-standard DDoS protection. It is not missing anything that any other vendor would be offering in that regard. As a client, you want to have a solution that will successfully defend you from volumetric attacks from the internet, and F5 Silverline Managed Services does that. It also offers standard reporting. It shows you how hard you have been hit and how mitigation kicked in and what it did. There is no universal, one-size-fits-all solution in this field, but when a customer has a lot of public services – they provide a web application or API – F5 Silverline Managed Services is the way to go for them.
I would recommend this solution to others. I rate F5 Silverline Managed Services an eight out of ten.
You should know what you're actually blocking. A lot of customers move to WAF or AWAF because they were told to do that, but they need to identify what they're actually looking to inspect. For example, one of the clients I worked with did not understand the differences in capabilities between a next-generation firewall and a WAF. When I say WAF, I am talking about AWAF, not the previous generation WAF. No one considers that anymore. People who try to put WAF and think that they are secure are not really secure. There is still a fine grain of security that you need on a next-generation firewall. For example, if I inject a payload, I'm going to have HTTPS traffic that I pass on to WAF. If I do not do my SSL termination and just inspect the remaining stuff, such as headers, WAF is basically useless. If you're using a WAF solution like F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, one thing it does really well is the orchestration part. It can terminate your SSL and do the encryption. Basically, it may make your stream decrypted via texts, inspect every element of it, decrypt it back, and then send it. As a security consultant, I would add another next-generation firewall behind F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. I will make sure that I do a service chaining, and every single stream or packet that is decrypted is again routed via a next-generation firewall to do IPS. This is because your WAF cannot do IPS. It is not its major strength; it is a firewall capability. Let's say you have a website where you upload files, and you are going to upload a file that probably has some malicious code that could be executed. When you upload it, it is going to sit on your system. How do you know that a file that is attached to a website is not malicious? A WAF generally doesn't take this up. That's where a combination of WAF and firewall comes into the picture. It's about defining and ensuring what is your load and how many applications you want to protect. Do you really have the skills to manage those policies in-house? If you don't have really good engineers who look at the policies and manage these boxes, then it is better to go for managers like Silverline. If you have good hands on the ground, then use an Advanced WAF in your data center. Some companies might not need on-premises deployments because they might be using a cloud. In that case, run this on the cloud. You could have virtual licenses or virtual machines running on the cloud, or you could use Silverline. If you're more security passionate, then you probably will have to have a Silverline for it and then another WAF within your cloud. Again, there's no one way to do it. It depends on your network, but do not rely on one product because every product has its limitations. I would easily rate F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. I won't give it an eight because I haven't tested it for a longer period.
We just renewed our license and will be continuing to use this product. Overall, this is a good security solution, but there is no such thing as a perfect appliance in IT. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
I would rate the F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall an eight out of ten. Pricing is the reason why I wouldn't give it a ten. There's really no 10 I think in the market. They always have something that needs to improve or upgrade.
If you are looking for web security and don't have any solution, just try it. I don't think the solution needs too much more. Sometimes you try to build too much and you make things worse. They should just take what they have right now and continuously improve it to make it better. With caching and security, everything so far is fine. I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.