Application security and cloud expert F5 Networks has helped the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department deliver world-class services as the emirate continues to grow.
The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) has announced it has improved the availability, reliability and security of key applications as it continues to modernise and improve service delivery across the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
Application security and cloud expert F5 Networks has been enlisted to deliver a more agile and efficient platform for applications and application services, helping ADJD adapt to, as well as anticipate, increasingly complex judicial challenges, rapid population growth and exponential online connectivity in the region.
According to Statistics Centre, Abu Dhabi (Scad), Abu Dhabi’s population has grown an average of 9.5% per year since 1960 in one of the highest rates of growth in the world.
“ADJD is all about supporting the UAE’s sustainable growth in a safe and just manner as we continue to develop and diversify our economy, attracting huge numbers of new residents and tourists,” said Faisal Al Dhaheri, Infrastructure and Operation Section Head, ADJD.
“We are committed to improving our services and deliver on the vision of HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to ensure justice that fosters citizens’ and residents’ rights, promotes equality and ensures security as well as socio-economic development.
“In order to do that, we need to use technology in intelligent ways, particularly when it comes to the performance of our key applications”
The project with F5 Networks entails running the F5 VIPRION platform equipped with BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to simplify, automate and customise application delivery.
ADJD is also using F5’s Silverline Web Application Firewall (WAF) service, which provides a managed WAF implementation and unified, scalable policy enforcement capabilities.
The service also includes 24×7 support from highly specialised F5 security experts with the company’s Security Operations Center (SOC) resources.
In addition, the project features F5’s Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (VCMP), the industry’s first purpose-built hypervisor, allowing the complete segmentation of purpose-built, scalable resources into independent, virtual application delivery controllers (ADC).
“ADJD is under pressure as the Emirate of Abu Dhabi continues to grow and become more complex to manage,” said Tabrez Surve, Regional Director Gulf and Turkey, F5 Networks.
“As a result, it is continually innovating to stay attuned to the region’s appetite for mobile, rapid connectivity and e-services. ADJD thoroughly understands the power and potential of applications to drive new levels of performance, and we look forward to seeing strong results with this project – not only today but also well into the future.”
Intelligent CIO spoke to Faisal Al Dhaheri, Infrastructure and Operation Section Head, ADJD, to find out more.
What F5 technology do you currently have in place?
ADJD is running the F5 VIPRION platform equipped with BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to simplify, automate and customise application delivery.
We are also using F5’s Silverline Web Application Firewall service. This provides a WAF implementation and unified, scalable policy enforcement capabilities. The service also includes 24×7 support from highly specialised F5 security experts with the company’s Security Operations Center (SOC) resources.
In addition, the project features F5’s Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing, the industry’s first purpose-built hypervisor, allowing the complete segmentation of purpose-built, scalable resources into independent, virtual ADCs.
What have been the major benefits of the solution (The F5 VIPRION platform equipped with BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager)?
The F5 VIPRION platform is equipped with BIG-IP LTM to simplify, automate, and customise application delivery to ensure greater security, availability and quality of service.
Essentially, BIG-IP LTM gives us an in-depth of understanding of our network’s application traffic and comprehensive control over how it’s handled. It enables the transformation of chaotic volumes of network traffic into logically assembled streams of data.
This allows us to make intelligent traffic management decisions, selecting the right destination based on server performance, security and availability.
Because BIG-IP LTM is a full proxy, it means we can inspect, manage, and report on application traffic both entering and exiting the network to achieve a new level of granular control. For example, if we want to direct traffic based on the requested URL, or log specific server responses to a reporting system, BIG-IP LTM has the architecture and the tools to do so.
BIG-IP LTM can also optimise the speed and reliability of our applications via both the network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on application and server conditions, extensive connection management, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves page load times and overall user experience.
How has the solution allowed you to improve the performance of your key applications?
BIG-IP LTM allows us to improve the performance of our applications by reducing traffic volume and minimising bottlenecks by dividing the huge traffic into a controlled stream. The solution gives us comprehensive load balancing, application health monitoring, high availability and transaction assurance.
Other benefits include:
- Automating and customising with programmable infrastructure: we can control our applications – from connection and traffic to configuration and management – with F5 iRules LX, the next stage of evolution for network programmability that brings Node.js language support to the BIG-IP platform
- Transitioning to SDN and cloud networks: BIG-IP LTM has the capability to realise operational consistency and comply with business needs across physical, virtual and cloud environments with deployment flexibility and scalability
- Easily deploying and managing applications: user-defined F5 iApps BIG IP LTM’s templates make it easy to deploy, manage and get complete visibility into our applicationsSecuring critical applications app protection via industry-leading SSL performance and visibility
What are the main benefits of F5’s Silverline Web Application Firewall Service?
As security attacks across traditional and cloud environments become more sophisticated, our in-house security teams must stay up to date on the latest attacks and protection measures, as well as deliver consistent policies and compliance across environments. A lack of consistency can result in security vulnerabilities, higher expenses, and a slower response to threats and compliance issues.
F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall is a cloud-based service with 24x7x365 support from highly specialised security experts. It helps us protect web applications and data and enable compliance with industry security standards.
Key benefits include:
- Application security and compliance: comprehensive protection from advanced layer seven attacks, OWASP Top 10 application security risks and zero-day attacks. Solution also helps ensure compliance with key regulatory mandates
- Identification and mitigation of malicious bots that bypass standard detection methods
- Mitigations that learn and adapt to unique application-layer user interaction patterns, enabling dynamic defences based on changing conditionsConsistent web application security, availability, and user experience across traditional data centres and multi-cloud
- Expert support on tap: We receive 24x7x365 access to WAF experts who build, proactively monitor, and fine-tune policies against known and emerging threats.
Access real-time attack data and reports through the cloud-based customer portal and incorporate external intelligence to secure apps against identified threats.
- Less complexity for WAF management, speeds up the deployment of new policies, and decreases operational expenses
- Virtual patching via signature detection of vulnerability exploit attempts. Integration with third-party dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools for automated virtual patching
What are the benefits of F5’s Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing?
Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (VCMP) is a feature of the BIG-IP system that allows us to provision and manage multiple, hosted instances of the BIG-IP software on a single hardware platform.
A VCMP hypervisor allocates a dedicated amount of CPU, memory and storage to each BIG-IP instance. As a VCMP system administrator, we can create BIG-IP instances and then delegate the management of the BIG-IP software within each instance to individual administrators.
A key part of the VCMP system is its built-in flexible resource allocation feature. With flexible resource allocation, we can instruct the hypervisor to allocate a different amount of resource, in the form of cores, to each BIG-IP instance, according to the needs of that instance.
Each core that the hypervisor allocates contains a fixed portion of system CPU and memory.
Furthermore, whenever we add blades to the VIPRION cluster, properly-configured BIG-IP instances can take advantage of those additional CPU and memory resources without traffic interruption.
How important has the support been from the security experts at F5 Networks?
Support from F5’s experts is very important to ensure we stay ahead of the curve for all security issues. The region’s cybersecurity landscape is constantly changing and the margin for error is shrinking fast. By working collaboratively with F5, we are determined to continually refine our technology for optimal performance, as well as keeping our operations up to speed.
How has the solution allowed the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department to adapt to increasingly complicated judicial challenges and rapid population growth?
Abu Dhabi has one of the highest population growth rates in the world, which presents a multitude of logistical challenges. At the same time, citizens are becoming more tech-savvy and demanding when it comes to speed, quality and security of service.
ADJD has a long history of technological innovation and we are committed to supporting the Emirate’s sustainable development in a safe and just manner. This is vital as our economy diversifies, the population expands and we continue to attract high numbers of new residents and tourists.
Why did you choose F5 Networks to supply your solution?
F5 offered the best option for us to optimise our application availability, visibility, speed and security. Our ability to scale and adapt to emerging threats with context-driven insight gives us an operational edge. F5 gives us the technological wherewithal to not only cope with the present but also effectively anticipate the future.
