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Although they're primarily known for top-shelf networking products, F5 Networks' offering in the application security space is no afterthought. Available as a standalone appliance or module for one of its network products, the BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) functions as an application firewall, protecting web applications and services with a powerful policy engine.
The initial setup was reasonably straightforward. The product we received for review was bundled with the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, which complicated the network setup only slightly. After defining our interfaces and assigning IP address and VLANs, we were ready to define our first policy. Policy creation was deceptively simple. The ASM offers a wizard for creating polices and came packaged with a number of predefined templates for several of the more popular web application packages, including MicrosoftOutlook Web Access, SAP NetWeaver, PeopleSoftand others. We needed only to specify the...