WAFY
HomeReferences › A Global Interbank Network

A Global Interbank Network

Part of the F5 Advanced WAF experience behind WAFY, described by business type rather than by name.

Reference

What the work involved.

F5 ASM experience taking 79 per-application policies to blocking on a global interbank network, one application at a time, without incident.

WAFY's F5 ASM experience includes a global interbank network that ran 79 separate Advanced WAF (ASM) policies on a single domain, one per application. Traffic was routed by a proxy behind the F5, so there was little local traffic routing on the BIG-IP itself, and many virtual servers pointed at a single pool member. The applications ran on very different stacks, with MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle back-ends and varied authentication and logging, and each had an application owner who regarded their application as absolutely business-critical. So the work was as much about confidence as configuration: every policy was enabled together, then moved into blocking one application at a time, through a single large weekend change window. Despite the understandable nervousness, every policy reached blocking without a single incident. Much of the effort went into XSS and SQL injection, today both OWASP A03 (Injection), and into talking to and training the development and application-owner teams so they trusted what enforcement would do. A significant DDoS protection project ran alongside the policy work.

F5 scope
  • 79 per-application Advanced WAF (ASM) policies on a single domain, all enabled together
  • Each policy moved to blocking one application at a time, in a single weekend change window, with no incidents
  • Proxy-fronted estate: routing handled behind the F5, minimal local traffic routing on the BIG-IP
  • A heterogeneous estate of MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle applications with varied authentication and logging
  • Focus on XSS and SQL injection, today OWASP A03 (Injection)
  • Close work with developers and application owners to build confidence in enforcement
  • A significant DDoS protection project across the estate