What’s new in BIG-IP version 13.1

I like to know about technology trends to take advantage of new features and enhancements because if we don’t keep studying, we won’t know how to deal new technology requirements. If we don’t read and study new features and enhancements, we’ll be out of market. This is the reason why I’ve written about what’s new in FortiOS 5.6 and what’s new in FortiOS 6.0. In addition, I like testing technologies and architectures such as Multipath TCP, Data Center Load Balancing, Web Application Firewalls (WAF), etc. Today, I would like to write about the new BIG-IP version 13.1.

The most known module is LTM or Local Traffic Manager which is useful for traffic load balancing. The BIG-IP version 13.1 has included new features like test button for monitor, iRule execution tracing features for debugging, TCPDUMP remote output, configuration load independent of licensing, etc. For instance, we can check monitors before assigning to nodes or pools, we can know the time-consuming iRules and we can also mirror traffic to a remote analysis tool.

Test Button for Monitors

Another interesting module is ASM or Application Security Manager which is useful to defeat sophisticated and complex threats for protecting web applications. The BIG-IP version 13.1 has also included new features to this module like simplified attack signature creation, remove inactive file types, passive deployment policy template, brute force mitigation improvements, etc. For instance, we can already write attack signatures easily, we can accept suggestion of removing inactive entities, we can apply a fully transparent policy without interfering with traffic and we can also improve brute force mitigation attacks by username, IP addresses and device IDs.

Passive Policy Deployment Template

 

F5 BIG-IP ASM has different kind of security policy templates which can be used for protecting Virtual Servers. For instance, if we want to apply a negative security policy where attack signatures detect and block known attacks and where we don’t want to configure manually entities such as file types, parameters, URLs, cookies, redirection, etc, we can configure a Rapid Deployment Policy which is easy to accomplish this task.

F5 BIG-IP APM or Access Policy Manager is another useful module which can be used for unifying application accesses securely. The BIG-IP version 13.1 has included many improvements like Microsoft Office forms based authentication, Citrix StoreFront, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services proxy, native application tunnel for macOS and Linux, update Edge client without BIG-IP upgrade, privileged OPSWAT checks, SAML attribute consuming service, etc.

Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services Proxy Support

 

As we can see, there are many new features and enhancements in BIG-IP version 13.1. Therefore, it is up to us to test this new features and enjoy of the new version.

Regards my friends; new version, new features, go ahead.