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Better security with Westcon and F5


Johannesburg, 10 Dec 2018

Seventy-five percent of data breaches start with identity attacks and the majority of these are now made by attackers using advanced automation techniques. These self-same automation techniques are now being used to scan applications for vulnerabilities, attack account credentials, or cause denial of service (DOS).

So, where do you even start to help button down your customers' defences? Through its partnership with F5, Westcon resellers have access to a full range of proactive bot defences that are designed to stop automated attacks. They also leverage a combination of challenge and behaviour-based techniques that then identify and filter out bot traffic. Key to this premise is that by stopping the bots, there will be a reduced opportunity for opportunistic attacks.

Ways to protect your business

Now throw in the cloud, multiple clouds and dispersed clouds, and your security becomes even harder. While the cloud was thought to simplify IT, it has introduced a fair amount of security complexity. To this end, Westcon offers its customers access to F5's comprehensive set of multi-cloud application services and management tools. This includes BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Access Manager, Advanced WAF, BIG-IP DNS, BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and BIG-IQ Centralised Management.

Notably, within the stack, F5 Advanced WAF deploys Web application firewall (WAF) services close to apps, so they're protected wherever they reside. Bear in mind that WAFs are an effective means to protect your business, as they protect applications from data breaches by fixing vulnerabilities and stopping attacks.

Within this, Westcon resellers can leverage the F5 Advanced WAF solution to help defend against attacks with bot protection, application-layer encryption, APIs, and behaviour analytics. It also combines machine learning, threat intelligence, and deep application expertise, key security hot buttons in a growing application world.

Security through partnership

Furthermore, based on Westcon's experience in security across the African continent, it understands that not all security threats are created equal. It is with this that Westcon applies a very specific services model to the delivery of its security solutions.

Skills remain one of the major challenges facing the South African ICT environment in the security space. And because of its leadership position and demand for its solutions, F5 skills are even harder to come by, which is why Westcon has partnered with the company as an official accredited training centre for its sub-Saharan African resellers.

The training Westcon delivers takes into cognisance that in order to face these new threats head on, a new breed of technologist needs to be created. These skills are capable of manipulating the entire application stack from traditional network knowledge, all the way to advanced application layer understanding, and which are then able to integrate the two.

With Westcon's own skills in-house, it is also able to deliver pre- and post-sales skills and support to help you better deliver on projects, while at the same time ensuring your competencies and skills are in place.

To summarise

In the world of bots, AI, and clouds, forward-thinking IT leaders and enterprise architects must plan for a new digital world. With F5, Westcon is providing its resellers a way to standardise tools, policies and operations across a diverse estate of compute environments; the end result is more robust security that is efficient, simple and supportable.

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Editorial contacts

Natania Tesnar
Anti-Clockwise Consulting
(+27) 11 314 2533
natania@anticlockwise.co.za
Andrew Potgieter
Westcon