F5 Advanced WAF Reviews

The DCI feature is very valuable. The solution is very robust, and I like the setup.

With this solution, you can set distinct perimeters that you can monitor. You can go very granular, which makes it possible to set up very specific perimeters that you are then able to secure.

The solution is tedious. It takes a lot of discrete settings so one needs to get detailed and granular when they use the solution. It takes you a whole lot of energy and concentration to configure. It needs to be much more straightforward, like other web solutions.

They need to have a way to define attack signatures. It might help improve the user experience.

I've been using the solution for close to four years.

The solution is quite stable. Since 2016, there hasn't been any concern in regards to security.

The solution is highly scalable.

Technical support is excellent. It's top-notch.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The solution is very compact. It takes more than one month for effective deployment.

The solution isn't too expensive. The license allows you to license what you need and leave out what you don't need.

We currently deal with the on-premises deployment model.

I would recommend the solution for use as an efficient firewall. Security is a complex thing, however, and I would advise others to use multiple vendors for different layers.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten.

We use this program 24/7 as a firewall to block malicious requests. We update regularly.

The solution speeds up our web application speed. This increases the availability of our services, because of the web base load balancer. It also improves our application security because of the additional features of the web application firewall. So our website works faster and better and it has a lower impact on our servers.

The features I find most valuable is the behavior analysis and the additional subscription for global threats. It's an additional feature, which I haven't seen in another solution. I also like the DDos protection behavior too, because some DDos are quite a problem and we have problems with it.

I am very happy with the interface, the dashboard, and the reports. Whenever I see a malicious request, I can see if I blocked it and then I can decide if I want to accept or decline. I am therefore completely happy with the ability to report and so on. 

This solution is the best out there on the market. One thing that can be improved, is to increase the quantity over predefine policy. I know it's impossible to do it all, but what I would have liked to increase the ready-to-deploy templates with only a few clicks.

I've been using the solution for four months on our premises now.

I have had no issues with the stability. Even my friends with bigger installation systems are satisfied with the stability. I believe it depends on how many features you use. I have also had no issues with clusters or software update signature updates. I believe this program is even more stable than the Windows server.

Whenever I need more performance, I just buy upgrade licenses and additional license keys. So scalability is a question of paying more. It is simple. Everybody who uses the site employs external clients. 

When I asked support for help they answered the same day with the answer. But it was small issues. I haven't had any serious bugs or any troubleshooting.

I have used different products with lower segments in other solutions. Some were magic when it comes to security and availability but they don't provide visibility on how it works, how it secures and so on. And there is no additional protection from both ends to have a behavior analysis. That is why we chose Advanced WAF. We chose it because of its additional features. We need a solution that is stable and that can offer deep analysis.  

The installment was straightforward and it took us about two hours. Deployment took a week or maybe two to complete. Complete installation for such a complex system is quite fast. 

After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year.

I definitely recommend this solution because of the time you save on analysis. It is a stable program and you get additional features. The more you work on it, the more features you discover. I rate this solution ten out of ten.

The anti-bot protection has been the most valuable.

I think the deployment template can be better, like the iApps they have in the F5 MPM. I think the deployment templates can be better.

I've been using the solution for four years.

The solution is pretty stable.

The technical support is very good. I'm using the F5 technical support, maybe once a quarter. Something like three to five times a year. When I find a bug then I post them to their forum because I'm using it a lot. I can find the bugs. But its very good support.

The initial setup was very simple. The initial setup is done by the machine. The ASM HS, the WAF itself, not the deployment of the application. So it was very simple, I am working with VIP for almost a full year. Something like ninety percent of my activities are F5 related. I specialize in F5 now and everything in F5 is very, very simple.

I'm an integrator.

I think the price is very high. This is what I hear from the customers. Sometimes we cannot sell the product because it is a higher price.

I evaluated a few other options. Kemp, for example, but Kemp is not a WAF it's a load balancer, it's for another model of the F5 so its not related to do WAF. And we're speaking about the WAF. 

I would recommend this solution. It would be the best solution for WAF.

I think the dashboard can be improved. When you move from the policy to policy, the logs and the integration of the logs are without a system. Maybe make it like other SIEM systems and system servers like Splunk. They do have a lot of training videos and manuals. This helps. But not really about integration or feature improvement.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use F5 Advanced WAF to protect some of our web applications and web services. We use F5 Advanced WAF as a web application firewall in production. 

Our clients are liable for the security of applications on the internet because they are in the banking services sector.

In this case, we used a few long-term models because F5 Advanced WAF is a complete solution. Our customers do not only use this model. 

F5 Advanced WAF is similar to other solutions used for a lot of projects. 

It's feasible for our customers to improve on their protection ability within the applications from secondary attacks, i.e. MySQL injection.

Each company is liable for the security of the customers using the service.

With F5 Advanced WAF, it was protection for online publications and for our customers that caused us to choose the platform. It was integrated by our company and not the dealer. 

For F5 Advanced WAF, it's only 70% different over time with upgrades. F5 can still build AWS support after many long years of absence. It's difficult to use.

F5 Advanced WAF needs better integration within the application, like remote dashboards. The pricing is too high. It needs better security features with the interface or dashboard.

We go through some problems with the Disc Doctor services and F5 was recommended to fix or avoid the same situation in the future.

F5 now is the product we use for the web products to have a web application firewall.

We need better integration in the application and more security features in the future.

We have been using this solution almost one year. It's new.

F5 Advanced WAF is very stable.

The technical support of F5 I didn't use, but I heard people like the feature. I haven't needed it personally.

We have used some other products but they didn't have enough functionality. You can launch media adaptation for variety with F5. That is one of the biggest advantages of this solution.

In the market now there is a lot of information on the setup of F5 Advanced WAF. You can look for it on the company website. I didn't use F5 support directly, just the materials.

F5 Advanced WAF is not a cheap product.

My advice is to recommend F5 Advanced WAF for use. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate F5 Advanced WAF a nine.

We use the F5  Web Application firewall to protect our corporate web server. The security of our web is our absolute highest priority.

We've only been using this solution for six months now, so we can't really see any improvement yet.

The most valuable feature is network detection intelligence and the ability to get extra internal access. I don't have knowledge about all the functions but, because it is a fully automatic process, the devices scan a lot of traffic. It is automatically set up to protect our web.

The administrator's user interface and some of the settings can sometimes be very complicated to understand. It would really help if they could be easier and more user-friendly. Perhaps the developers can add a training video that shows users what to do. I am sure it is a good product and you only need some experience to become familiar with it.

Another thing that may need improvement, is upgrading from one version to another. It is good, but it can be faster. 

We've been testing the F5 -BIG-AWF-VE Web Application for six months now and we plan to implement the solution in July.

It is a very stable solution. We currently have three administrators and about 300 users working on it.

The scalability is great because we can change or set this device up for almost everything. We can even extend to other functions and buy new licenses - this product will automatically adapt to these new functions. For example, we can buy a license and F5 will automatically extend to these functions. It is a very simple process to extend functionality to this device. You only need to install the license and configure it.

The technical support is perfect. Our company is a corporate partner, and we can also use services directly from other international support centers.

It was a very difficult decision to find the right solution. We used open source software before to protect our system's open source architecture.
We switched to F5 WAF because, for us, professional services are absolutely necessary. There are other cheaper options on the market, but when you need support, it can sometimes be a problem. 

We've incorporated our partner and he initiated the setup of this device. He used both the manual and the automatic setup options, and then he compared the two options. And now, as we are in production, we choose either automatic setup or manual setup. The automatic setup is quite easy, but the manual setup is complicated. It all depends on what you want from the product.

Our partner was responsible for the initial setup. 

I will rate the product a nine out of ten. 

In general, the web interface is not really catchy. It's very powerful, very customizable, but it doesn't have a very nice GUI interface for a new adopter. For them, they'd have to do a lot of configuring. At least the reporting and monitoring parts, let's say, to be honest, should have a better interface. A few other products have very nice dashboards, out of the box, and F5 is not that friendly to use.

Also, when you buy WAF, you have to buy another module called APM to do authentication. You have to buy another module with an extra license, to have the authentication feature. Other vendors have it interwoven. For example, I don't know if Barracuda has it, but Citrix has it under the same license. So maybe add authentication functionality in the AOS license, and not separate.

I've been using the solutions for 10 years.

The stability is perfect. 10 out of 10. We've not had any trouble with any deployment ever. And they are very big deployments: service providers, TelCos, banking, everywhere. Even on distant parts of the network, we have not had any kind of performance issues. Of course, as long as the sizing is within the appliance performance range. But it never has had a failure in performance or degradation of service or anything like this, as long as the full-time traffic is within the box capability, we've never had an issue.

It's scalable. 

We are a partner for F5, or a system integrator, not the client. So we do the implementation for other companies. I've been working with F5 for more than 10 years, so I know them very well. 

I like them because I like the security solution. They get extra marks compared to other solutions or competitors. There are more features than any other product I can think of. They're always monitoring, and the security features offer more than other, lesser products.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

We are a PPS payment providing services company in banking, so, we are using it for that. We are banking company and we are using it as a web application firewall.

We have an SOC, and for collecting logs we are also using the F5 logs to analyze the securities and events. So having a central log management and F5 really helped us to analyze the security logs. It also helps with blocking the attacks on web applications.

Everything is good about the F5 WAF, except the reporting. It's really difficult to set records from that device, the UI is kind of hard to work with, and the reporting must be improved.

As a suggestion to the F5 company, they have to put in shells to have the next generation WAF. So, instead of buying different modules and different hardware and appliances, they can offer an all-in-one solution for WAF.

The initial setup was was easy to install. Our department wasn't installing it, the infrastructure department installed it, so we gave them the policy that we wanted to use.

Because of the sanctions, we couldn't buy it straight from the US, so we bought it from an Iranian company. They provided us that solution. The company that sold us the device also had some people to consult with us to give us best practices from the previous companies that installed it.

I think it's a good product but the F5 uses shells, so the people who want to work with the device have to be pro in Linux. If they can put everything in the UI so every regular security engineer can work with it, it's fabulous.

I would rate the solution 8 out of 10. We are concerned about the other factors but it's actually not F5 company's fault. The pricing is really high here right now because of the dollar rate but it has nothing to do with the F5, it's because of the sanctions I imagine. At the moment it's a really expensive solution for us, not only F5 but the other appliances. 
If I went to another company, and the other company hired me, I would suggest they use this device. Although we don't have a lot of options to choose from around here.

Our primary use case for this solution is web application security. We deploy this solution on-premises.

We have found the accessibility feature most valuable. For example, the solution is easily accessible on mobile and laptop devices and allows you to send and receive money from anyone.

The delay times on firmware patches and software updates could be better and improved.

We have been using this solution for seven years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup is complex but easy once you understand the product.

Their pricing is very good for the quality of the product they have delivered in the market. It is a standard licensing cost annually.

We chose this product because we believe it is the best product for us. There are other firewalls in the market, but you always look for the best as a vendor.