F5 announced the launch of F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure Protection (AIP), a cloud workload protection solution that expands application observability and protection to cloud-native infrastructures. Powered by technology acquired with Threat Stack, AIP is the newest addition to the F5 Distributed Cloud Services portfolio of cloud-native SaaS-based application security and delivery services.

Organizations of all sizes across industries are in the midst of efforts aimed at simplifying, securing, and innovating application-driven digital experiences. However, many face the challenge of managing distributed and hybrid application infrastructures composed of workloads across on-premises, public cloud, and edge locations. This creates tremendous complexity and increases the security threat surface, and as a result customers are forced to deploy inconsistent security controls and lack necessary visibility, particularly for cloud-native deployments.

Attacks such as those exploiting Log4j and Spring4Shell can evade signature-based detection defense mechanisms and target vulnerabilities and misconfigurations within application infrastructure. Distributed Cloud AIP brings deep telemetry collection and high-efficacy intrusion detection for cloud-native workloads and-when combined with the in-line application and API security from F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP-delivers a defense-in-depth approach to security threats that span across applications, APIs, and the cloud-native infrastructures where they run.

"Organizations are managing a dauntingly complex mix of hybrid and multi-cloud application architectures that can slow the pace of digital innovation and create subsequent security risks," said Kara Sprague, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, F5. "The addition of AIP fills a critical need for customers as they look for ways to extend robust security controls to multiple cloud infrastructures where they run their modern applications."

A large majority of organizations are now deploying microservices-based applications on cloud-native infrastructure and connecting them through APIs. This approach to application development can radically increase the pace of innovation while lowering total cost of ownership. However, vulnerabilities and misconfigurations at the infrastructure level leave these applications open to attack from both internal and external bad actors. These intruders leverage vulnerabilities in cloud services or stolen keys to get access to cloud-native resources, where they can move freely throughout the infrastructure, inject malware, run cryptominers, or access sensitive data.

F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure Protection addresses these challenges through:

• A combination of rules and machine learning to detect threats in real time across the entire infrastructure stack: cloud provider APIs, virtual machine instances, containers, and Kubernetes. With behavioral-based detection, AIP can identify insider threats, external threats, and data loss risk for modern applications.
• Detection and alert of anomalous behavior impacting workloads to inform operations teams of potentially malicious activity that may require further action to block or remediate.
• Complementing existing signature- and behavioral-based threat detection capabilities with actionable insights from advanced telemetry and detection of post-exploit activity at the app and cloud infrastructure level.
• F5 Distributed Cloud AIP Managed Security Services, an "always-on" Security Operations Center team that detects, triages, and investigates threats and provides remediation recommendations on behalf of customers.
• F5 Distributed Cloud AIP Insights, providing custom platform analytics and ongoing coaching from F5's cloud security experts to help customers build a stronger cloud SecOps strategy and better achieve their goals.