NGINX Plus Authorized by U.S. Department of Defense’s Iron Bank

Since NGINX joined F5, we’ve had the opportunity to participate, partner, and invest resources in an extended set of communities and organizations worldwide. As an example, it was recently confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that NGINX Plus has received formal authorization from the DoD’s Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative, Iron Bank.

This gives DoD teams expanded capabilities as part of a verified digital infrastructure, while also signaling the company’s growing presence in the Federal sector.

Iron Bank is the DoD's centralized hardened container repository, led by the U.S. Air Force, that contains authorized container images hardened to the strict specifications set out by the U.S. Department of Defense. Container images that meet these specifications are then authorized for use across the DoD, providing a Certificate to Field (CtF) and promoting rapid application deployment.

As one of the world’s leading web servers, NGINX is perfectly positioned to provide the DoD with a single platform to use downloaded hardened NGINX Plus images for production-ready deployments, including reverse proxy, load balancing, Kubernetes ingress, API gateways, and application security. DoD DevSecOps teams also enjoy access to other enterprise‑grade features like high availability, active health checks, DNS system discovery, session persistence, and a RESTful API. By using Iron Bank authorized images, NGINX Plus customers can save time and resources that would otherwise be needed for individual organizations to build a secure DevSecOps pipeline.

Regarding the Iron Bank authorization, Nicolas Chaillan, Chief Software Officer for the U.S. Air Force, comments:

“We are thrilled that NGINX Plus has received this important authorization, further securing NGINX within the DevSecOps community for the benefit of both users/customers and our organizations. NGINX has made some noticeable and significant strides in terms of its security offerings, and this authorization from Iron Bank stands as only the latest testament to their reliability and security.”

Rob Whiteley, Vice President and General Manager of NGINX at F5, adds:

“We are very proud of the work and efforts made to prove NGINX Plus as a trustworthy platform and partner for Iron Bank customers to use with confidence. Our security offerings at NGINX have been in focus recently, with the release of NGINX App Protect and NGINX Controller, and this latest endorsement proves that our faith in our engineering & product teams, as well as our wider NGINX and DevSecOps communities, is well-placed.”

As a result of this news, F5/NGINX would also like to invite those in the DevSecOps community—especially those in Federal organizations and system integrators—to sign up to become part of the NGINX Fed Community. As part of the NGINX Fed Community, members will be eligible to gain access to NGINX licensing, training information, deployment guides, resources, and additional materials. Alternatively, more information is available about NGINX Plus by emailing nginx-federal@f5.com, with details on adjacent technologies available on the F5 U.S. Federal Government solutions page.