With a new security service introduced today, network traffic management company F5 Networks Inc. said it’s helping its enterprise customers to protect themselves against malicious bots and other types of automated attacks on their websites.

The fully managed service, called Silverline Shape Defense, is based on technology F5 acquired when it paid about $1 billion to buy a company called Shape Security Inc. in December.

Shape Security sold an artificial intelligence-based fraud detection platform used by airlines, banks, government agencies and other organizations. When it was acquired, it said the platform was mitigating more than a billion fake transactions every day.

Silverline Shape Defense uses AI algorithms to detect if requests such as login attempts on applications and websites are made by a real human or a malicious bot, and is meant to prevent bad traffic while removing any friction for legitimate users, F5 said. The service also provides full visibility into a website’s traffic, highlighting how it’s being protected from bad actors.

F5 said the tool will help businesses to protect themselves against other threats such as credential stuffing and scraping that often result in fraud, leading to loss of revenue and damage to their brand’s reputation. It enables them to do so without investing in a large team of security personnel, the company added.

“F5’s Silverline managed security services improve not only application security and performance but also bridge the resources gap of skilled cybersecurity professionals that are needed to address the latest cyber threats in real-time,” said Gail Coury, F5 Silverline’s vice president and general manager.

F5’s Silverline suite of security products also includes a web application firewall and a threat intelligence platform, as well as a tool to protect against distributed denial-of-service attacks.

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