F5 and BackBox Integrated Network Automation Solution
Trusted Network and Security Device Automation
Integration Highlights
Automate OS updates and vulnerability patches for F5 devices across your network in a timely manner, to prevent exposure to known vulnerabilities. This includes automating multistep updates and support for older devices.
Automate backup of F5 BIG-IP and other security devices. Each backup is validated to ensure its integrity and can be restored with a single click. Backups and restores become so simple, they can easily be incorporated into any potentially destructive automation for rapid recovery.
Backups can be stored off-site and encrypted with a longer history of backups saved to help with troubleshooting or in the event of an undetected vulnerability.
Fully support CIS Benchmark compliance out-of-the-box, including an initial gap-analysis, ongoing automated configuration audit, drift prevention, reporting, and optional automated remediation.
Ensure your CMDB is always up-to-date and that security vulnerabilities don’t go undetected with Dynamic Inventory capabilities.
The Challenge
Modern enterprise-class networks are incredibly complex and require constant changes to maximize uptime and minimize vulnerabilities. This complexity is exacerbated by the pace of change within networks to support new applications and services for businesses and their customers. Manually automating the configuration of all network and security devices to ensure business continuity can often be difficult, time-consuming, and prone to human error.
In fact, 92% of our customers say they face more updates to their networks than they can accomplish.
Network and security devices require constant OS updates, patches, and configuration changes to protect from vulnerabilities. Failure to perform these updates in a timely manner exposes the network to security threats and the potential for costly downtime. In the absence of regular backups, which often happens when backups are complex to perform or require manual steps, networks experience slower recovery from downtime following outages.
The Solution
To tackle these challenges, organizations need a trusted automation platform that can make repetitive network tasks efficient and reliable, works with existing network architecture and operations, and scales for both enterprise and MSP deployments.
BackBox delivers such a platform with out- of-the-box capabilities for backup, OS updates, compliance auditing and auto-remediation, Dynamic Inventory Reporting, and closed- loop management of vulnerability patching.
BackBox and F5 Integrated Solution
The F5 and BackBox integrated solution provides automated backup and single-click recovery of F5 BIG-IP devices, eliminating the need for time-consuming and ineffective manual processes or creating and managing in-house scripts.
The F5 and BackBox integrated solution provides automated backup and single-click recovery of F5 BIG-IP devices.
BackBox Dynamic Inventory collects granular asset information from all F5 products and then reports on inventory information, including license information, device model, serial numbers, and more. Inventory information can also be passed along to other systems, like an ITSM or CMDB via the BackBox API.
BackBox can change operating system-level parameters on multiple devices with a single click, providing the ability to delegate administrative tasks to individuals who do not require full policy access, which minimizes potential human errors that could lead to costly downtime.
BackBox also provides seamless integration to verify that F5 devices are configured in alignment with internal and industry security policies and regulations, such as the CIS Benchmarks, and can automatically remediate.
Benefits Of The Integration
Automated, verified OS upgrades of F5 BIG-IP devices to protect from vulnerabilities.
Automated, validated backups for F5 BIG-IP devices.
Single-click restore and disaster recovery.
Validation and automatic remediation of configurations against policies and regulations.
Automated discovery of newly connected F5 BIG-IP devices for easy asset management.
BackBox Intelligent Network Security Automation
BackBox is the most trusted network automation platform, focused on automating network security and operations at scale for enterprises and Technology Services Partners.
Flexible automation empowers our customers to enhance the health, performance, and security of over 100,000 networks worldwide.
We believe that network automation should be easy and reliable, providing our customers with unprecedented time savings and reduced risk.
F5 BIG-IP Application Services and VIPRION Platform
F5 BIG-IP application services provide the availability, performance, and security organizations need to meet business demands. BIG-IP application delivery controllers keep applications up and running, while BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and BIG-IP DNS handle application traffic and secure infrastructure. Users get built-in security, traffic management, and performance application services, whether applications live in a private data center or in the cloud.
Each F5 BIG-IP VIPRION platform is a single, powerful Application Delivery Controller (ADC) with modular performance blades that can be added or removed without disrupting users or applications, delivering quick and easy programmability, multi-vendor service orchestration, software-defined hardware, and line-rate performance. Organizations can accelerate private clouds and secure critical data at scale, while lowering costs and future-proofing infrastructure.
F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management provides insight into and tight control of every BIG-IP application service and device in on-premises, public, and private cloud environments.
Use Case 1
CENTRALIZE AND AUTOMATE OS UPDATES AND VULNERABILITY PATCHES
The Challenge:
OS upgrades and patch management is a critical aspect of maintaining network security posture. The versions of OS that runs on the network infrastructure must be closely managed to ensure continuity of service and remediation of known security vulnerabilities. But manually keeping track of the frequent OS upgrades and patches of network and security devices is getting more challenging, especially with limited resources.
The Solution:
BackBox offers automated OS updates and patches for F5 BIG-IP devices, and will do the same for network and security devices from 180 other vendors, all from a centralized location, and typically with a single automation. This eliminates the need to hop from one tool to another to update different devices, saving time and resources. Users can use BackBox to update the OS of F5 devices, alongside hundreds of devices seamlessly, with a single click.
Use Case 2
ENFORCE COMPLIANCE WITH CIS BENCHMARKS
The Challenge:
With configuration updates getting more frequent due to the acceleration of new threats and malicious actors, it is a challenge to ensure all security devices are up-to-date and compliant with internal organization policies and government or industry regulations.
The Solution:
By eliminating the need to manually check device configuration for compliance, BackBox provides contextually-aware automation templates that remove the drudgery and reduce risk by validating that a specific configuration for F5 devices or devices from other vendors meets best practices, and can automatically remediate those that do not. Rechecks can be scheduled to run daily or at whatever frequency desired. Administrators receive notifications of configuration drift and can auto-remediate to bring the organization back into compliance.
Use Case 3
AUTOMATE BACKUPS
The Challenge:
Manual configuration backup for network security devices is time consuming and prone to human errors. In addition to security infrastructure, network engineers must perform regular backups on routers, switches, and other network devices from multiple vendors, via multiple different user interfaces, further increasing risk.
The Solution:
Seamless integration between BackBox and F5 BIG-IP devices enables automated, centralized, and secure backups for all configuration information from F5 devices and devices from other vendors. This ensures rapid recovery and minimal downtime.