Like all vulnerabilities that make the news, the recent MOVEit vulnerability might tempt enterprises to quickly jump in a very tactical manner. Similarly, it might even cause vendors to shift into an “ambulance chaser” mode. Despite the pressure to react tactically, a strategic response is a far better approach.
Application and API security is a topic that is of the utmost importance for enterprises. It is also a somewhat complex topic that is easier to discuss than it is to get right. Because of this, enterprises typically work with a strategic partner to ensure that they are protected from the widest variety of threats—from the very elementary to the extremely sophisticated. In particular, in state government, local government, and higher education (SLED), there is a lot of prized, sensitive data that motivated attackers are eager to access.
Before we can protect our applications and APIs, we need to know what they are and where they are. This is called API discovery. Despite our best efforts to control and monitor the development and deployment life cycle, unknown cases of infrastructure, applications, and APIs are always popping up without the knowledge or support of IT and security. It is because of this that discovery is so important.
Assuming we have a decent handle on what applications and APIs we have and where they are, we can move to focus on protecting those applications and APIs from security and fraud threats. This includes protecting them from exploitation of vulnerabilities, fraud/business logic abuse, unauthorized access, breaches, theft of PII or other sensitive data, and automated attacks. A trusted partner that specializes in this advanced level of protection can be a tremendous asset to an enterprise.
Some examples of these advanced protection capabilities include app proxies, rate limiting and fast Access Control Lists (ACLs), WAF, DDoS protection, bot defense, auto-certificates, malicious user detection, URI routing, service policies, synthetic monitors, TLS fingerprinting, device identification, cross-site request forgery protection, and others.
Working with a trusted partner helps enterprises ensure that they are better protected against yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s attack headlines, rather than only against the hot news item of the day. Today’s news item will quickly be replaced with tomorrow’s, and enterprises that are not prepared for that will face the same tactical fire drill all over again.
See this resource for more information and contact the F5 team to schedule a demo.
About the Author
Related Blog Posts
F5 accelerates and secures AI inference at scale with NVIDIA Cloud Partner reference architecture
F5’s inclusion within the NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) reference architecture enables secure, high-performance AI infrastructure that scales efficiently to support advanced AI workloads.
F5 Silverline Mitigates Record-Breaking DDoS Attacks
Malicious attacks are increasing in scale and complexity, threatening to overwhelm and breach the internal resources of businesses globally. Often, these attacks combine high-volume traffic with stealthy, low-and-slow, application-targeted attack techniques, powered by either automated botnets or human-driven tools.
F5 Silverline: Our Data Centers are your Data Centers
Customers count on F5 Silverline Managed Security Services to secure their digital assets, and in order for us to deliver a highly dependable service at global scale we host our infrastructure in the most reliable and well-connected locations in the world. And when F5 needs reliable and well-connected locations, we turn to Equinix, a leading provider of digital infrastructure.
Volterra and the Power of the Distributed Cloud (Video)
How can organizations fully harness the power of multi-cloud and edge computing? VPs Mark Weiner and James Feger join the DevCentral team for a video discussion on how F5 and Volterra can help.
Phishing Attacks Soar 220% During COVID-19 Peak as Cybercriminal Opportunism Intensifies
David Warburton, author of the F5 Labs 2020 Phishing and Fraud Report, describes how fraudsters are adapting to the pandemic and maps out the trends ahead in this video, with summary comments.
The Internet of (Increasingly Scary) Things
There is a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that gets attached to any emerging technology trend, particularly when it involves vast legions of consumers eager to participate. And while it’s easy enough to shrug off the paranoia that bots...