F5 Friday: A Q&A with Comtrade on App Security

Cyberattacks are a fact of life for IT teams, but no one wants to deal with the aftermath of a hacker breach. F5, a leader in application security, has teamed with Comtrade Software to provide users with an additional level of clarity into hacker attempts to breach the system.

We spoke with Simon Taylor, president of Comtrade Software, about the company’s new release of SCOM management pack for F5 BIG-IP® , and how it can help protect businesses from unwanted intruders. But enough from me, let’s get on to some questions and answers.

F5: Hi Simon, thanks for taking the time to chat with us about the new Comtrade SCOM Management Pack for F5 BIG-IP.

Simon: My pleasure, happy to be here.

F5: This MP is big on security, so let’s start off by painting a picture of the security landscape today. What challenges are IT admins facing?

ST: The security landscape is more complicated and challenging today than ever before, and cyberattacks are costing businesses a lot of money. In 2015, the Ponemon Institute found that on average, cybercrime costs businesses that experience a breach $15 million per year. Sadly, that number has gone up 19 percent since 2014, and will likely continue to grow as hackers become more sophisticated. And when you measure the costs, you have to think beyond the immediate business disruption losses to future costs associated with data loss and recovery, long-term reputation damage, legal fees and lack of consumer trust.

F5: Talk about the F5 partnership with Comtrade, and how we’re addressing these challenges together.

ST: Well, it’s no secret that F5 has been leading the charge when it comes to security for a long time now. F5’s Big-IP® Application Security Manager ™ (ASM) is one of the best available for combating hackers, protecting business from the 10 most common threats and many more beyond those. F5 has deployed security intelligence tools that are unparalleled, and give IT teams advance notice of any threats. This characteristic is a major reason why we teamed with F5 – we saw that you know how to do security right, and you took it seriously, which is compelling from a partner standpoint. We wanted to assist F5’s already market-leading efforts by escalating the abilities even more. With our MP, Microsoft SCOM users can integrate alerts throughout the IT infrastructure – including F5 – and gain even more detailed information about the nature of attacks. We rolled the F5 advanced detection capability into the SCOM platform, and extended it to other devices.

F5: Thanks Simon – we’re pretty proud of our ASM capabilities, and are excited for the increased protection your MP provides to users. When can they expect to receive this plug-in?

ST: The Comtrade SCOM plug-in for F5 BIG-IP is available today. We’re extending the BIG-IP ASM capabilities to SCOM users within the same dashboard, and providing enhanced reporting and monitoring options to make sure teams stay on top of cyberattacks. No one wants to be part of the group that pays upwards of $15 million in one year to make up for hacker activity, and we’re willing to join F5 in creating a major barrier against these types of attacks.