F5-CrowdStrike network security partnership: Is EDR enough?

<p>Seeking to better protect customers from exploitable network devices, F5 and CrowdStrike recently <a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.f5.com/company/news/press-releases/f5-and-crowdstrike-strengthen-web-traffic-security-with-falcon-for-f5-big-ip” rel=”noopener”>announced</a> a technology alliance in which CrowdStrike Falcon will integrate with and run directly on F5’s BIG-IP platform. This partnership will enable customers to use workload security from the Falcon agent, as well as CrowdStrike’s Falcon Adversary OverWatch managed threat hunting service, across their BIG-IP footprint. The vendors have positioned this alliance as a new approach that redefines network protection and extends edge protection from laptops, desktops and mobile devices to vulnerable network infrastructure.</p>
<p>While this is a growing area of concern for many organizations, it is worth noting that this partnership comes on the heels of a significant breach F5 suffered in August and <a target=”_blank” href=”https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K000154696″ rel=”noopener”>disclosed</a> in October in which nation-state actors stole segments of BIG-IP source code and vulnerability details. As a result, eligible BIG-IP customers will be able to deploy Falcon and use OverWatch at no cost through October 2026.</p>
<p>So, while vulnerable network devices are a significant and ongoing issue — a Fortinet FortiWeb vulnerability capable of remote code execution was <a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/critical-fortinet-fortiweb-waf-bug-exploited-in-wild” rel=”noopener”>recently exploited in the wild</a> — and this partnership represents an avenue to addressing the problem, it is in reaction to a specific event and has a fairly narrow focus, at least to start. That said, credit to F5 for moving quickly to engage with CrowdStrike and help ensure customers are protected and have the tools they need to defend themselves for this issue.</p>
<p>This announcement represents an interesting and much-needed development in detecting threats that target network infrastructure, but it overlooks the following key issues regarding the broader network infrastructure protection issue:</p>
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<li><b>The partnership currently only covers F5’s BIG-IP family.</b> Most organizations support multiple network device vendors. For full visi

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