F5 Advanced WAF Reviews

It is used for application security and load balancing. As we have a few customers who are using banking applications, and stock market applications, they are more concerned about security and how to protect the product and their business applications. And that's why we offer security applications. Besides that, there are new features for load balancing in the F5.

Customers find the load balancer feature as the most valuable.

The tool needs to improve its pricing. 

I have been using it for two years.

It is a very stable product. It is the favourite product of banking customers in Egypt.

It is a very scalable product. You can write down any iRule you want as it is very convenient.

We used Citrix ADC, Fortinet FortiWeb, and Barracuda before F5 Advanced WAF. We switched to F5 Advanced WAF due to its efficiency and the port lockdown feature that the customers in Egypt like. Also since it's certified by Gartner, the customers feel confident using it.

The initial setup was simple.

If you are looking for a really good product, you should consider F5 Advanced WAF.

I would rate it a nine 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.

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. 

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.

For me, the primary use case is to secure web applications from external threats, including cross-site scripting, SQL injection attacks, file inclusion vulnerabilities, and many more. The tool has simplified protection against web applications and recent threats that might be visible. If your applications are vulnerable, it gets protected by F5.

It is a very flexible solution. iRules is quite appealing when it comes to F5, and they apply it throughout their solution. BIG-IP is a known platform, and it is a part of F5 now. Application delivery or web application firewalls, F5 understands these terms and then suggests better data policies. But you have to do the work on your application's performance first. You have to look in the logs and understand the total attack you should prevent when we put it in the circuit protection mode, which works perfectly well.

iRules truly excites me because it has the ability to prevent the end-user and infrastructure from external threats.

Even if the F5’s default signatures and the default behavior are unable to help you, you can customize iRules to reach the objectives.

I don't like the management control of F5.

Moreover, if you are not an expert, it would be really difficult to set it up.

I have been using the product for fifteen years or more.

It is a stable solution.

It is definitely a scalable solution.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. I didn't experience any complexity. It could be difficult for somebody who is not familiar with application load balancers or web applications. It takes a month to understand the entire architecture. It primarily depends upon how great deployment could be.

It usually takes about five to seven days to configure and deploy the F5 Advanced WAF in production mode. It is essential to ensure that your configuration works properly before putting it into production mode.

When you have already designed it, it takes around five to seven days to set up. But it takes more than a month to understand the entire architecture of the F5.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

F5 Advanced WAF can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. When it comes to local governmental organizations, it's mostly on-premises solutions they use. However, we recommend using virtual ones.

F5 Advanced WAF is used for protecting applications.

The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the balancer and you can change policies very easily.

The overall price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve.

I have been familiar with F5 Advanced WAF for approximately one year.

I have not had any customers complaining about the stability.

F5 Advanced WAF is scalable.

The initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF is easy.

I rate the setup of F5 Advanced WAF a four out of five.

The ease of maintenance of F5 Advanced WAF depends from customer to customer. If the company had someone trained or they have an inside person who is reliable for this maintenance, they typically do not have any problems.

The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive.

There can be extra features added at an additional cost.

I rate the price of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.

Our clients pick this solution over others because it is one of the leading companies in the category.

I can recommend F5 Advanced WAF to any customer because we have experience, and referrals from customers using it within different models. If it comes to WAF, LTM, or whatever. I'm very happy to sell it because it is one of the leading vendors within its line. Our customers within the financial market, such as banking organizations, are very happy with it.

I rate F5 Advanced WAF a nine out of ten.

We are distributors in Vietnam. We consult for our customers and I am a Product Manager. We use F5 Advanced WAF as a firewall for our website applications and the websites of our customers.

The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection.

In the future, I would like to see F5 include AI in the hardware of F5 Advanced WAF.

F5 Advanced needs to improve its bot protection. The solution needs to have machine learning to learn the behavior of the customer to recognize the human versus the bot. This is a difficult feature to explain to our customers. I would like documentation about the bot feature to make it easier for the customer to understand.

I have been using F5 Advanced WAF for two years.

The solution is stable.

F5 Advanced WAF is scalable.

We tend to handle our own technical support for our customers. My experience with F5 support is a three out of five overall. They need to improve the information and training of the receiver.

Positive

The initial setup was neither easy nor difficult. I would rate setup as a four out of five.

The pricing of F5 Advanced WAF is more expensive than other solutions like Radware and CD18, it is quite high. I rate the product a one out of five for price, with one being expensive.

Overall, I would rate F5 Advanced WAF an eight out of ten overall.

It's considered one of the modules for the LTM box. It's all modules for the LTM box.

It is actually to protect the customer web application which is published on the internet. It's actually to protect that, and nowadays, we also have this threat intelligence. You will link to the F5 centra, the depository of the threat intelligence database. We always have the latest update on the common threat that is happening currently. You will notify the customer if there's an issue.

The threat intelligence function is great. Nowadays, there is more awareness on the security side. They'd have a real-time update from F5. It provides peace of mind on the security side for the customer.

It is an add-on module to protect the web application.

The solution can scale with planning.

The solution is stable.

Support is helpful.

The deployment side is quite complex. We'd like them to simplify the implementation process. I'm not sure whether they can do that, however, they have to be very detailed on configurations, and sharing of the policy. Anybody that configures this box, the WAF, they have to have knowledge of the application and some of the security portions there as well.

We've had the solution since last year. We have deployed it to a customer.

It is stable. Actually, it evolved from ASM, what they call the Application Security Manager, and now they name it Advanced WAF. It's been around for a while. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We'll size up based on the customer requirement with some buffer, maybe 20% to 30% for the future extension. There is also some consideration on the capacity planning and the size of the box. You can scale. You just need to plan ahead. 

In terms of users, with Advanced WAF, normally their role is more related to the security side.

We just implemented the solution recently and we'll have to wait another three or four years before we change or upgrade the solution. 

I've dealt with technical support. We're quite satisfied with them. They're good. 

Positive

F5 WAF is a web application, in the firewall domain, they have been in the market for a very long time. They know the requirements and the market trends very well. This is the reason why we normally chose F5.

The solution is pretty difficult to set up. You really have to have a grasp o the product to configure it correctly.

The setup takes approximately two months. It's quite a long time. If the application is not ready, then the dependency will be on the application side. Therefore, the cycle is quite long. It depends on the application readiness.

We just need one to two people to handle deployment and maintenance. 

The licensing is charged yearly. It's considered expensive, however, there are more expensive WAFs on the market - like Imperva. F5 is second after Imperva in terms of cost. L1 to L3 support is included in the cost.

I'd rate the price of the solution at a four out of five in terms of how expensive it is.

We tend to stay with F5, however, we will look at pricing and try to negotiate based on that. We'd like to get a discount and look at the market to see the costs. 

I'd advise that new users need to know the requirement expectations, and then the criticality of the application that they're going to let the user use. Sometimes the application is public to the internet for a public user to log into and query the database. In that case, we're exposed to all kinds of external parties. So if you put something that is cheap in place, something that is not able to do the protection properly, then it will be a very big risk to the company. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. Our clients have been very happy with it.