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F5 and Google Cloud: Over 6 Years of Modernizing and Protecting Apps Together

Beth McElroy Thumbnail
Beth McElroy
Published April 04, 2024

Together, F5 and Google Cloud are making multicloud easier. Google Cloud provides the foundation for your application modernization initiatives and is the most multicloud-friendly hyperscaler. F5 brings security and performance to your apps anywhere they run to reduce complexity and improve reliability. Throughout our more than six years of partnership, F5 and Google Cloud have worked together to provide frictionless security.

What is frictionless security?

By enhancing Google Cloud services with F5 automation, performance, and insight, we can secure apps and APIs without adding obstacles for your legitimate users. F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense and Google reCAPTCHA are great examples—these solutions block malicious bots without frustrating your users. Instead of requiring site visitors to solve yet another CAPTCHA (which is more effective at stopping humans than bots1), F5 and Google Cloud work behind the scenes to identify and block malicious bots using machine learning. 

Frictionless security for your users is better for business. Reducing friction can lead to higher customer satisfaction, more completed transactions, and repeat business. The challenge is limiting friction without compromising security. F5 overcomes this challenge by combining AI with human domain knowledge to accurately identify the most sophisticated bots, while innovative code obfuscation ensures attackers can’t evade defenses through reverse engineering. This provides effective—yet frictionless—security.

Eliminate internal security friction

F5 and Google Cloud also reduce friction for your security teams. Multicloud has not only expanded the attack surface; it’s also expanded the number of tools security teams need to manage, which makes their work more difficult. F5 lets you use the same security tools anywhere, helping you protect apps and APIs on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge with consistent policies and a single management console that require less effort.

Connecting apps across clouds is another major source of friction. Often this is a messy, ad hoc process that requires significant cloud networking expertise. However, F5 simplifies this process with simple one-click provisioning in F5 Distributed Cloud multicloud networking. This solution makes it easy to connect your apps on Google Cloud with other sites while also adding security and visibility across your entire distributed environment.

Securely modernize apps

In addition to frictionless security, F5 and Google Cloud support your app modernization journey as you move to virtualized, Kubernetes, and serverless apps. Whether you want to bring your F5 BIG-IP rules to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), integrate an F5 web application firewall (WAF) into your CI/CD pipeline, or deploy and protect APIs, F5 and Google Cloud help you securely modernize apps with less effort.

You can get the fast and reliable applications you need to do business in today’s digital world with F5 and Google Cloud. Ensure the performance of your legacy and modern apps with F5 traffic management and DNS, or dynamically respond to issues with auto-scaling services to keep applications at peak performance.

A broad, integrated portfolio

With over 50 F5 solutions in the Google Cloud Marketplace, F5 and Google Cloud are aligned on app modernization, security, and performance anywhere your apps run. Throughout our partnership, we’ve also collaborated on industry solutions that span financial services, government, media, and telecommunications.

Healthcare is a particular highlight as we work to secure Epic applications that are integral to patient care. By using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with Google Cloud, hospitals and clinics can ensure reliable access to apps and data through consistent deployments, simplified configuration, and web application firewalls complete with validated policies.

Join Us at Google Cloud Next ‘24

We’re excited to showcase the many benefits of our partnership at Google Cloud Next '24 in Las Vegas from April 9–11. If you’re attending the event at Mandalay Bay, come check out the F5 booth (#440) in person to see everything F5 and Google Cloud have been doing together. Learn how you can modernize and protect apps and APIs anywhere, prevent online fraud, and connect apps across clouds with ease.

For more information, visit f5.com/gcp.

Source:

1. Andrew Searles, et al., An Empirical Study & Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs, UC Irvine, Jul 2023