How F5 Distributed Cloud AIP Helps Full-Stack Cloud Security (formerly Threat Stack)

Cloud security has become a hot topic over the past few years. Following the current trends, more and more of the essential infrastructure is moving to the cloud — and there are some good reasons for it such as scalability, reliability, and cost savings.

On the flip side, this also means that every new high-profile hack is now being discussed and analyzed by the whole industry.

Liquid Web’s customers have been requesting an affordable IDS (Intrusion Detection System) solution that would cover their security monitoring needs for active threats. Up until just recently, such solutions have only been available to enterprise clients, due to the amount of required resources and prohibitive costs.

Today, we’re introducing F5 Distributed Cloud AIP — a new IDS offering for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

What Is F5 Distributed Cloud AIP?

F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is a security platform designed specifically for monitoring cloud environments, covering workloads, vulnerabilities, infrastructure, and compliance.

The main benefit of F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is that it provides continuous proactive monitoring across your full infrastructure stack. Not only does it monitor your web application, but it also helps track risky behavior that starts at deployment, scans your operating system, detects any unusual patterns in file hosting, and analyzes other server events in real time.

As a result, you don’t need to integrate multiple security solutions in the cloud or spend time manually tweaking the desired functionality. F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is implemented throughout the stack right away, is platform-independent, and easily adapts to various environments.

The Benefits of Using F5 Distributed Cloud AIP

F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is a compelling offering for all SMBs that want an additional, hands-off security layer and already utilize Liquid Web infrastructure. In fact, our existing clients can already get this sophisticated security functionality at any time right through the My.LiquidWeb Interface.

Some of the benefits of using F5 Distributed Cloud AIP at Liquid Web include:

• Real-time protection from active intrusion attempts. This means that you now have visibility into ongoing events on the server, saving yourself from the consequences of discovering a data breach too late.
• Monitoring for reactive, proactive, and interactive threats. In other words, F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is designed to detect even the most evasive discrepancies in your server events.
• Quick threat detection in cloud infrastructure. F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is able quickly isolate problems, equaling less damage incurred.
• A flexible, all-in-one solution. F5 Distributed Cloud AIP is tailored to your server’s specific operating system deployment and remains accessible to you, no matter how your infrastructure changes or scales over time.
• Improved PCI and HIPAA compliance. Meeting and maintaining compliance is essential for companies that manage sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or patient data.

Essential F5 Distributed Cloud AIP Features

F5 Distributed Cloud AIP’s security offering is growing rapidly and continuously incorporating more functionality. Here are a few F5 Distributed Cloud AIP features that any Liquid Web client is able to access today:

• Pre-configured rules tailored to your specific operating system or control panel setup.
• 24/7 proactive monitoring of users, processes, networks, and file behaviors.
• Fully integrated IDS functionality with real-time alerts and threat response.
• Machine-learning capability that leverages more than 60 billion events in the F5 Distributed Cloud AIP infrastructure every day to be able to detect and respond to threats faster than ever before.
• Affordable price even for the smallest companies.

Who Should Use F5 Distributed Cloud AIP?

If you ask us, we’re convinced that every company can benefit from having F5 Distributed Cloud AIP as part of their security strategy. Specifically, however, F5 Distributed Cloud AIP works best for companies who want real-time protection against active external threats and need to reduce alert investigation time from hours to minutes.

This has become critical for all companies, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent work-from-home policies. When so many employees are suddenly accessing your cloud infrastructure from new IPs, from various locations, and at different times, it turns into a taxing workload for your security team. While the expected baseline behavior is not the same anymore, the need for detecting suspicious behavior quickly remains a top priority.

To give you an example of F5 Distributed Cloud AIP in action, take a look at their Q1 2020 report, which has identified a dramatic increase in attempts to regenerate users’ SSH keys by logging into a bastion host, elevating permissions to root and examining the SSH folders of others.

When it comes to adopting F5 Distributed Cloud AIP in your organization, Liquid Web is one of the very few web hosting companies that offer affordable IDS solutions of this type. Most other mid-tier offerings available today are much more limiting, since they are often restricted to certain operating systems and control panels, while we install the F5 Distributed Cloud AIP functionality in a way that is tailored to your specific needs.

With Liquid Web, you get a truly platform-agnostic solution that doesn’t require setting up multiple tools and undergoing any extensive training.

F5 Distributed Cloud AIP provides all the benefits of top enterprise-level security available on-demand.

Find Our More About F5 Distributed Cloud AIP

Still not sure how to go about implementing F5 Distributed Cloud AIP in your company? Contact us and a member of our tech team will be happy to answer any IDS-related questions on your mind.

For over 20 years, Liquid Web has been focused on securing small and medium-sized businesses around the world. With 45,000 customers, we have a rock-solid knowledge of all aspects of managed hosting, security, and compliance. We’re also excited to be able to continuously provide more value by offering the latest industry functionality, such as F5 Distributed Cloud AIP, to all our customers.

Contact us to get started today.