F5 enters into alliance with AWS to enable users to innovate faster in the cloud

F5 Networks announced a multi-year global Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to allow customers to use F5 for new cloud-native application workloads and extend their existing F5 investments on AWS.

F5’s application services ensure the performance and security of millions of applications for global enterprises. The SCA will enhance companies’ ability to leverage the full suite of F5 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-native application services to migrate, build, secure, and operate their applications on AWS. 

The structured framework of this engagement will allow customers to have a consistent and scalable operating model for their application assets on AWS, while exploring future innovations that enhance migration and operation of applications to the cloud. 

Customers can use advanced F5 solutions to standardize, scale, and optimize application services for AWS environments, from lift-and-shift and re-platforming, to full application development and modernization.

“F5 has collaborated closely with AWS for years, most recently on our SaaS offering, F5 Cloud Services. Together with AWS, we are providing a set of solutions that help enterprises deploy apps quickly and securely, while ensuring they are performant and comply with policy,” said Chad Whalen, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales at F5. “This aligns with our strategy of supporting modern DevOps practices and serving engineering teams with capabilities that create the most efficient path from code to customer.”

Enterprises are adopting the cloud to speed innovation cycles and create efficiencies, but today many companies must maintain separate data center and cloud environments, which drive up their operational costs, add complexity, and increase risk. These customers need a hybrid cloud solution that allows their applications to run with consistent performance and security regardless of the location. 

The work F5 and AWS do together addresses this need, allowing organizations to use F5 application services across all environments. Additionally, F5 solutions will make it easier for DevOps teams and application developers to provision, configure, and manage services via APIs or the web portal, without the need for deep networking or security expertise.

“The ability to deploy and run applications on AWS using F5 services is an important requirement for many customers that have standardized on F5 for application delivery and security,” said Mike Clayville, vice president, worldwide commercial sales and business development at AWS. “This Strategic Collaboration Agreement elevates our historic relationship with F5 to a higher level. It will be a great asset for customers as they build new cloud-native applications on AWS and move an increasing number of mission-critical workloads such as SAP and Windows to AWS.”

As part of the collaboration, F5 and AWS will work to allow customers to upgrade to F5’s application services, including F5 Cloud Services using cloud-native, SaaS-based application performance and security services; BIG-IP Virtual Edition with software-based, full-featured Layer 4–7 application delivery and security services; NGINX is a lightweight, highly scalable, and highly performant API management, and full-service proxy software built atop the open source web server; Silverline, its cloud-based managed services platform for application threat protection; and Aspen Mesh, an enterprise-ready, fully supported service mesh built on Istio.

“StockCharts.com is benefiting tremendously from the close collaboration between F5 and AWS,” said Chip Anderson, Founder and President of StockCharts.com. “By leveraging F5’s cloud solutions on AWS, our new cloud strategy is allowing us to provide our customers with a faster, more reliable, secure, and scalable set of web applications. We are now providing more insight and data, faster than ever before.”

CloudVector introduces API Threat Protection with automated and continuous discovery

CloudVector announced launch of its namesake solution, which discovers, monitors and secures APIs to prevent data breaches. The proliferation of APIs have encouraged threat actors to target this new attack vector, increasing the risk of major data breaches. 

Existing Web Application Firewall (WAF) and API Management gateways are unable to provide API Threat Protection because of inherent limitations in their architectures.

To move beyond the gateway, CloudVector encourages organizations to adopt an API Threat Protection solution that is able to automatically discover APIs, monitor for deviant behavior, and secure data from exfiltration. CloudVector is the first API Threat Protection platform to deliver this full feature set.

CloudVector is purpose-built for modern application architectures, and is deployed with zero impact to inline performance, with no changes required to applications or DevOps processes. In fact, CloudVector eliminates the need for manual API specification to deliver immediate time to value.

The CloudVector’s API Threat Protection platform include discover with API Inspection Modules (AIM) that provide fully automated microsensor modules enable the continuous discovery of all APIs connected to enterprise assets—even shadow APIs. 

It also monitors with Deep API Risk Trackers (DART) that apply proven machine learning to customer-specific API blueprints that drive automatic identification of API risks and, real-time detection of reconnaissance attempts, and provide real-time response modules enforce targeted policies against API abuse—the only solution to entirely address the OWASP API Security Top 10.

CloudVector, which was formerly known as ArecaBay, also announced the appointment of Ravi Khatod as co-founder and CEO. Ravi is a seasoned Silicon Valley security executive with more than 15 years of experience focused on building foundational teams and strategy, driving sales success and customer excellence, and delivering growth at category-defining vendors including IronPort, CipherTrust, and AppSense. Prior to CloudVector, he served as CEO of Agari, a next-generation email security company, where he drove 300 percent in revenue run rate growth in three years.

“APIs have become mission critical for organizations as they move to the cloud and embrace digital transformation initiatives. Attackers have also recognized this new and broad attack surface. As we’ve seen with recent high profile data breaches API security has become a predominant challenge,” said Khatod. “The shortcomings of existing gateways represent a multi-billion dollar market opportunity for CloudVector, which is advancing the state of the API Threat Protection market with its solution.”

CloudVector has raised more than US$5 million in seed funding round led by SignalFire, which it is aggressively investing in the growth of its R&D, sales and marketing teams.

“CloudVector delivers API Threat Protection we couldn’t find in any other vendor, without negatively impacting DevOps—it automates tedious manual processes to discover APIs and secure them,” said Abhijit Oak, vice president, Software Development, Katerra. “This product enables us to simplify our security structure and spend.”