F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and F5 Silverline Managed Services both compete in network security. While Silverline leverages cloud-based services, BIG-IP AFM focuses on on-premises solutions. Silverline appears to have an edge with its cloud-native functionality and real-time mitigation.
Features: F5 BIG-IP AFM offers load balancing, DDoS protection, and web application firewall capabilities. Its integration of network security activities and customization via iRules adds flexibility. F5 Silverline Managed Services provides real-time attack mitigation, distributed architecture benefits, and seamless cloud-native functionality, making it ideal for easy deployment and tailored protection.
Room for Improvement: F5 BIG-IP AFM could enhance user interface, automation, and reporting capabilities. Users also suggest improved API integration, simplified configuration, and better pricing. For Silverline, users request additional Points of Presence and better threat detection capabilities, alongside improved navigation and reduced costs.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 BIG-IP AFM is typically used in on-premises and hybrid deployments, with mixed feedback on customer service response times. Silverline supports cloud and multi-cloud environments, offering flexible deployment. However, technical support can vary in quality, highlighting the need for consistent service across representatives.
Pricing and ROI: F5 BIG-IP AFM, though expensive, offers a comprehensive feature set that justifies its cost, with licensing options that may include additional support fees. Users report a good ROI, especially when integrated with other F5 products. Silverline's pricing, based on bandwidth usage, also poses a concern, with additional features potentially increasing costs. ROI is satisfactory when Silverline is used as part of a larger security ecosystem.
The responses are generally fast and effective.
The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten.
Their support team is responsive, and they deliver timely updates, addressing any glitches promptly.
They resolve the issues by joining me to fix them.
The solution is highly scalable, allowing me to add or remove nodes and manage traffic without interruption, which is essential for meeting application demands.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is scalable enough without observed limitations.
The solution is fully scalable, and I would give it a rating of ten on a scale of one to ten for scalability.
They offer regular updates, and overall, I would rate the stability of the solution as nine out of ten.
Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.
The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security.
Introducing preemptive support prompts would reduce the manual effort required for creating policies or blocking specific IPs.
Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles.
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive.
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.
On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three.
The solution is expensive
The solution provides behavioral analysis via AI to detect malicious traffic.
The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications.
It allows for centralized management of certificates, protecting applications from top ten attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals.
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is a high-performance, full-proxy network security solution designed to protect networks and data centers against incoming threats that enter the network. Built on F5’s industry-leading BIG-IP hardware and software platforms, BIG-IP AFM provides a scalable platform that delivers the flexible performance and control needed to mitigate aggressive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and protocol attacks before they overwhelm and degrade applications and infrastructure availability.
For service providers, BIG-IP AFM IPS does even more, protecting the network edge and performing traffic inspection and protocol adherence for prevalent service provider protocols such as SS7, Diameter, HTTP/2, GTP, SCTP and SIP traffic coming into the network over UDP, TCP, and SCTP.
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 lists of threatening IP addresses to give context for policy decisions.
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