F5 reaches Australian public sector milestone

Application security company F5 has reached a milestone with its Australian government business, now having over 20 federal and 50 state government agencies as customers.

The company also has several local government agencies as customers, as well as major Australian banks, telcos and other enterprise organisations.

Meanwhile F5’s Distributed Cloud Services platform has seen rapid adoption across all levels of government, and has recently undergone a successful Infosec Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) assessment, enabling its use in handling government data up to the PROTECTED classification level.

F5 Regional VP for A/NZ Jason Baden said public sector organisations are embracing application security in response to the evolution of applications as the centre of digital life, as well as the escalation of threats against those applications.

“In a perfect world, government departments would have a deep IT bench full of the most talented developers and engineers with a team dedicated solely to ensuring application security hardening,” he said. “But in reality, the skills gap means public sector departments are competing for talent against the deep pockets of the private sector. Despite government IT teams being highly dedicated and highly skilled, they are often under-funded and under-resourced, and IT staff are forced to wear many hats.”

The F5 Distributed Cloud Services suite allows customers to take advantage of software-as-a-service based security, networking and application management capabilities without needing a deep bench of dedicated talent to address security threats, Baden said.

The company’s Distributed Cloud Web App and API Protection capabilities also simplify security and automation processes, taking the burden off application teams.

“Our heavy investment in the automation and AI capabilities of our solutions, particularly F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP, is helping the public sector bridge the tech skills gap,” Baden said. “Development teams can focus on the features and functionality in the digital apps that increasingly power the public sector, safe in the knowledge that security is being built-in along every step of the way.”

Image credit: iStock.com/gorodenkof