F5 Inc. today introduced a set of new software tools designed to help companies more efficiently manage and secure their technology infrastructure.

Nasdaq-listed F5 is a major cybersecurity provider that reported $693 million in revenue last quarter. Its applications help enterprise block bots, distributed denial-of-service attacks and other threats. F5 also sells fraud detection software, as well as tools that organizations use to manage their network infrastructure and the data traffic it processes.

The company sells several of its core security, fraud detection and networking tools as part of a product suite called Distributed Cloud Services. With today’s update, F5 is expanding the product suite by adding new features for protecting application programming interfaces from cyberattacks.

An application’s API enables external workloads to access the information it contains and, in some cases, change its configuration. As a result, APIs are a major focus of hacking campaigns. The security features that F5 debuted today are designed to reduce the risk posed by such cyberattacks. 

The new features are based on technology that F5 obtained through its recent acquisition of Wib Security Ltd., a Tel Aviv-based API security provider. The startup launched in 2022 and raised more than $15 million from investors prior to the acquisition.

F5’s Wib-powered cybersecurity features enable software teams to scan a newly developed API for vulnerabilities before releasing it to production. According to the company, the software can determine if an API lacks the controls necessary to block unauthorized data requests. It detects other types of issues as well, such as cases where the information sent in response to a data request is not adequately encrypted.

The technology F5 gained through the Wib acquisition can also be used to secure APIs once they’re deployed in production. The software spots so-called shadow APIs, or overlooked APIs that are not protected by a company’s cybersecurity controls. Additionally, Wib’s technology monitors for malicious activity and generates suggestions on how to mitigate any cyberattacks it detects.

“Companies already face daunting complexity and a rapidly changing threat landscape,” said F5 Chief Executive François Locoh-Donou. “The added pressure to secure and deliver AI services compounds this, putting many security and IT teams in an untenable position. We are delivering new capabilities that ensure our customers are ready for AI, making it significantly easier for them to protect and power every app, every API, everywhere.”

The second addition to the company’s product portfolio that debuted today is a software platform called AI Data Fabric. It aggregates the telemetry that other F5 software products gather about customers’ technology environments. According to the company, the platform uses that aggregated telemetry to power a new artificial intelligence chatbot.

The chatbot allows administrators to request information about a technology environment’s configuration using natural language queries. Additionally, it can surface data on potential technical issues and visualize that data to ease troubleshooting. F5 says the AI also generates remediation suggestions for the malfunctions it finds.

The chatbot is set to roll out later this year. It’s one of several new offerings that the company plans to power using the newly debuted AI Data Fabric. The telemetry that the latter platform aggregates about customer environments is collected from, among other sources, the Distributed Cloud Services suite, the product line for which F5’s new API security features are rolling out.

Photo: F5