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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager, a firewall software combining a number of features including DDoS, DNS security, and other protections.N/A

    Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AThe Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF) is based on technology acquired with Incapsula and the former WebSphere WAF.N/A
    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Feature
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    5.6
    3 Ratings
    42% below category average
    Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies2.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools1.83 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection5.53 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls6.43 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console2.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging6.43 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability3.63 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection2.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    9.5
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    We were able to eliminate a firewall from our network architecture by integrating the module into our existing F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM). This allowed us to save on tech refresh costs, since the F5 was able to handle the module without much additional strain on the device. However, if a firewall had features that the AFM lacked, then using that firewall in tandem with an F5 would be preferable.
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    I recommend Imperva specially if you have a big environment with thousand of websites because of its ease to use and availability. Imperva delivers a reliable solution with great capability to contain cyber attacks and even fraud preventions in some cases. The only scenario it's less appropriate is if your focus is anti fraud instead of a solution to block cyber attacks.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    F5
    • Load balancing using pools
    • SSL offloading
    • iRules for threat handling
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    • Block some dynamic attacks such as SQL injection.
    • Block unfriendly accesses based on geographic source.
    • Helps us implement SSL in cases where the original server can't (yet).
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • The GUI icons are very small and Overall UI can use some refreshing
    • The training on the tool is not easily available and mostly involves a high cost
    • The support or third party implementation teams could use some improvement
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    • Attack Correlation Validation - This specific policy produces a lot of false positives as well as the SQL injection policies. Of course it is difficult to tell what a legitimate query is on a public facing web app.
    • Profiling - I tend to spend more time than any other feature tuning the Web App Profiles. Plugins are used to help cope with this, but on extremely large web apps we are forced to turn off the profiling feature.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    F5
    While parent policies help simplify the deployment, the UI definitely could be more straight forward and simplified for troubleshooting and tuning
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    It's easy and works great. The onboarding process, although easy, can sometimes take too long for SSL and domain validation, but its not a big deal.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    F5
    F5 Advanced Firewall Manager has been a solid, strong solution to both keep our systems safe and being seamless for our end users. Most of the time, the end-user is not impacted and does not even know F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is running which is exactly what we are looking for.
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    We haven't needed support from Imperva since implementation. But during that time, their personnel were very quick to respond to questions. Since then, it's been largely doing its thing for us (which is exactly what we'd hoped).
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    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a bit easier to initially set up than F5 Advanced Firewall Manager but not as robust in its ability to manage different devices with different profiles. Different machines need different access and F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is better at allowing flexibility in identifying different devices and managing what they can access.
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    I believe there's no comparison as Imperva is a much more reliable and powerfull WAF. AWS WAF lacks of several features Imperva have and is not that simple to configure neither have a clean web console. I consider Imperva WAF a whole superior level of cyber security solution and it's consider to be one of the leader in this segment.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    F5
    • When we had to decide on whether to buy different hardware our team were all in support of renewal for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager]
    • F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] requires proper training on tools and clear concepts of packets, headers, and content to create WAF policies
    • Overall, we are satisfied by the ROI provided by our F5 AFM and GTMs
    Incentivized
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    Imperva, a Thales company
    • Meet compliance requirements - Check.
    • Better Insight into web application - Absolutely great, checks all the traffic against RFC standards and will alert on common development mistakes that duplicate application traffic or provide attack vectors for potential attackers.
    • Have had several issues blocking a customer without producing alerts, while it happened only one week out of 2 years of working with the devices, it did produce a lot of headaches.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots