F5 has announced enhancements to its application security portfolio at Agility, the company’s industry-leading event for architects, engineers, and developers focused on improving application security and performance. The new solutions highlight F5’s progressive approach to application security, enabling customers to deliver safe, frictionless, and modern digital experiences as consumers increasingly rely on applications for social interaction, healthcare, and even significant purchases such as real estate.
In addition, these offerings bolster F5’s technology leadership position in combining multi-cloud application security and delivery with bot mitigation and anti-fraud capabilities to guard organizations and individuals from sophisticated threats.
Applications and digital experiences are the defining elements of today’s organizations, representing the most significant and pervasive way businesses connect with their customers. Particularly in an era that has seen a necessary de-prioritization of in-person or location-based commerce, consumer desire for continuously expanding app functionality has only heightened, with APIs being one of the quickest and most efficient means to add features to existing digital offerings. Simultaneously, the protection of customer data remains of utmost importance, even as many security teams struggle to keep pace with the required skills. The upcoming 2021 Application Protection Report from F5 Labs underscores this point, attributing more than two-thirds of API security incidents to incomplete authentication and authorization at API endpoints.
Device ID is a real-time, high-precision device identifier that helps customers better understand the devices interacting with websites and mobile apps. The solution uses advanced signal collection and proven machine learning algorithms to assign a unique identifier to each device based on its browser, OS, hardware, and network attributes. For returning devices, usage behaviors can be analyzed to facilitate the reduction of fraud and a smooth experience for known good users—meaning they can spend more time enjoying digital experiences and less time proving (and re-proving) device legitimacy. Previously free to Shape customers, the solution is now being made available to all F5 customers at no charge, helping jumpstart customers’ data and analytics journey with security.
Shape Recognize leverages the intelligence of Shape’s extensive telemetry, building on the capabilities of Device ID with insights around login history, environment, and integrity across the network to further enhance the consumer experience and remove authentication friction. The solution delivers top-line revenue through recognition of legitimate users, rescuing known, good consumers from the frustration of excessive logins and reauthentication. Recognize achieves this by accurately identifying returning consumers and other legitimate users in real time through the power of deep analytics, behavioral and contextual awareness, and the broad reach of the Shape network. With this level of insight, web and mobile applications can dynamically reduce or eliminate login friction, leading to increased revenue and vastly improved consumer convenience.
Shape AI Fraud Engine (SAFE) uses a closed-loop machine learning approach to detect and block fraud in real time. SAFE identifies and stops account takeover, malicious account origination, exploitation of stolen accounts, and other fraudulent activities. Powered by Shape’s AI engine and data-driven insights generated from evaluating over a billion transactions a day, SAFE seeks out and eliminates fraudsters’ efforts across all points of the user journey, including login, account creation, and additional activities that could otherwise serve as potential targets. As a fully managed service, SAFE also reduces the often-overwhelming workload on fraud teams, blocking threats that would otherwise require costly investigation and remediation.