F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced the launch of F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure Protection ("F5 Distributed Cloud AIP"), a cloud workload protection solution that extends application observability and security to cloud-native infrastructure. The solution is powered by Threat Stack, acquired by F5, and AIP is a cloud-native SaaS-based application security and application delivery service – the latest addition to F5's distributed cloud services portfolio.

Today, businesses across all industries, large and small, are committed to delivering simplified, secure, and innovative digital experiences driven by applications. However, many enterprises face the challenge of managing distributed and hybrid application infrastructures consisting of workloads deployed on-premises, in the public cloud, and at the edge. Multi-application deployment environments not only introduce significant complexity, but also increase security threats, forcing customers to deploy inconsistent security controls and lack the necessary visibility, especially for cloud-native deployments.

Some attack vectors, such as attacks with Log4j and Spring4Shell, can circumvent signature-based threat detection defenses and target vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the application infrastructure. F5 Distributed Cloud AIP can be combined with embedded application and API security from F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP to provide deep telemetry data collection and efficient intrusion detection capabilities for cloud-native workloads, and address security threats across applications, APIs, and cloud-native infrastructure environments under which applications run by providing defense-in-depth security capabilities.

Kara Sprague, F5's global executive vice president and chief product officer, said: "Many enterprises are managing a complex mix of hybrid and multicloud application architectures, which can hinder their digital innovation and create subsequent security risks. Our customers are looking for solutions that extend robust security to the multi-cloud infrastructure where modern applications run, and the emergence of F5 distributed cloud AIP addresses their critical needs. ”

Today, the vast majority of enterprises are deploying microservices-based applications on cloud-native infrastructure and connecting via APIs. This approach to application development increases the speed of innovation at the source while reducing total cost of ownership. However, vulnerabilities and misconfigurations at the infrastructure level make these applications vulnerable to internal and external bad actors. These intruders exploit vulnerabilities or stolen keys in cloud services to access cloud-native resources, then wreak havoc on infrastructure, inject malware, run encryption programs, or access sensitive data, exposing enterprise applications to extremely high security risks.

F5 Distributed Cloud AIP helps enterprises easily address security challenges with the following capabilities:

· By combining rules and machine learning, real-time threat detection of cloud vendor APIs, VM instances, containers, and Kubernetes across the entire infrastructure stack is possible. With behavior-based detection, F5 distributed cloud AIP will be able to identify insider, external, and data loss risks in modern applications.

· Detect and alert on anomalous behavior affecting workloads, and notify operations teams to take further action to stop or remediate potential malicious behavior if identified.

· Complement and enhance existing signature- and behavior-based threat detection capabilities with actionable insights based on advanced telemetry and malicious process detection at the application and cloud infrastructure level.

· Professional F5 distributed cloud AIP management security services, "all-weather standby" security operation and maintenance center team, can provide security threat detection, classification and investigation services, and can design and create exclusive remediation solutions for customers.