Alpha News talks security with Diego Arrabal, Regional Sales Director at F5 Networks ME.
Q: Describe the main security issues F5 addresses
Deigo: There were severe weather problems in Western Europe for most of December, causing huge problems for those trying to return home for the Christmas holiday celebrations. This problem, of returning home, has parallels with what F5 offer with our access, authentication and acceleration security portfolio. There are many different locations, devices and networks people use to get ‘home’ to their corporate network. F5 addresses these problems in the context of alleviating and improving quality of service, network threats, slow connections and complex deployments.
Q: How relevant is your solution?
Deigo: Well, most analysts expect the mobile workforce to expand dramatically over the coming years. IDC estimated that we will see one billion mobile workers in 2011. It’s certainly true that companies have increasingly geographically dispersed workers who need fast, secure and reliable access to corporate resources. Vendors that provide for these needs have a good opportunity to get in front of IT teams.
Q: What makes F5 different in this sense?
Deigo: You hear words like ‘unified’ and ‘optimised’ bandied around by many vendors. In the sense of providing holistic secure, fast remote access, that’s what F5 address also; companies are looking beyond expensive, single-point products that provide an isolated solution. With F5’s Edge Gateway, that not only provides consolidated, secure access, but really fast access as well, that’s our game-changer. You rarely hear ‘acceleration’ and ‘security’ in the same sentence. People sit up and notice when they hear we can do this.
Q: The second main security area F5 addresses is web security - please explain further.
Deigo: Most companies with a web presence know that secure application access and delivery of web-based applications are non-negotiable, not just as good security practice, but for maintaining brand and reputation. The WikiLeaks attacks of late 2010 serve to demonstrate the sort of unwanted attention website attacks can bring.
Q: So what does F5 offer?
Deigo: As with everything F5, there’s a two part answer to this question. On one hand, we protect web properties with a Web Application Firewall called Application Security Manager or ASM. And then, from a customer perspective, it’s also important to note that ASM, as with all our solutions, which cover application security, availability and speed, sits on the same platform, is totally integrated with the rest of our portfolio, and is managed the same way too.
