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Akamai App and API Protector vs F5 Shape Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai App and API Protector
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
F5 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (7th), Bot Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Akamai App and API Protector is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 4.0%, down 4.4% compared to last year.
F5 Shape Security, on the other hand, focuses on Fraud Detection and Prevention, holds 1.9% mindshare, down 4.0% since last year.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Fraud Detection and Prevention
 

Featured Reviews

Deepesh  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 9, 2024
Bot Manager and different features to manage threats
As a product, it has good capabilities, including professional support. However, it's risky for us to rely on AI for real-time traffic management. We use in-house analytics but avoid automatic actions due to their high impact. For example, I live in a developing country. Everyone has different types of phones, apps, and everything else. So, if someone is using a legacy phone, that is still a use case here. If AI decides that this is an end-of-life phone or end-of-life Android operating system, it starts blocking that traffic. We may potentially lose millions or probably thousands and hundreds of thousands of hits per second. Everything is all about how well we serve payments because we're into payments. So, AI is used for analytics but not for real-time decisions. We can't afford to block traffic based on AI models due to the variety of devices and operating systems our users have.
Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 20, 2024
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."
"The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers."
"It enables us to move faster with new products because we have this layer of protection set up in our infrastructure."
"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."
"The product has a good user interface."
"The dashboard is the most interesting feature of the Akamai portal where you can have a detailed analysis of all the attacks that are happening. You can drill down an issue and see exactly what is happening, who are the bad guys attacking your website, and how Akamai is protecting the website. That is the most valuable feature."
"Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is a good solution that provides basic web application protection."
"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
 

Cons

"It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now."
"Akamai needs to focus on quickly responding to risks, even those that may potentially be of zero threat..Maybe some of the documentation is a little confusing. They have a lot of different places where you can go to get information, and some of the information is quite out of date."
"Could integrate more features for each security."
"One area where Akamai can improve is the captcha part. Cloudflare provides a captcha if there are a certain number of threats. For example, I can assign that if there are 10 requests within a second from a single IP, it should send a captcha to the user. The user should fill in the captcha, and only after that, the user should be able to access our website. This captcha feature should be built into Bot Manager. I love this captcha feature of Cloudflare."
"One thing I asked them is to integrate the API discovery product that they have and push that data into Akamai App and API Protector so that we do not have two types of reviews to identify the type of traffic. We already know the APIs that are frequently getting used, so analysis becomes easier. We can integrate both products and use them."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"There are some issues with pushing configurations across a network. It still takes about 20 minutes and that means to retract it's another 20 minutes."
"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"The tool's price is high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about."
"Its price is slightly high. Every company has a justification for the high price. Overall, it feels worth the money based on how the service has been structured, but we do negotiate it."
"The solution is expensive."
"If you want quality, you have to pay the price. Its price is fair. Their account managers are also very helpful. They help you a lot with pricing even though they are working with Akamai."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
"The solution is moderately priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Healthcare Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?
The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a slight difference.
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
What makes automation distinct as an attack vector?
An aspect that sets automation apart as an attack vector is its ability to mimic legitimate user behavior and evade traditional security measures. Automated attacks can simulate human-like interact...
How does F5 Shape Security’s system work? What are its components?
One key component is the Shape Defense Engine. It sends telemetry to the Shape AI Cloud, a highly secure data system where machine learning algorithms analyze the data to detect patterns of automat...
Can F5 Shape Security protect both our web and mobile applications? Are there any specific features for mobile app protection?
F5 Shape Security can protect web apps as well. It’s a bit complicated, but goes something like this: The platform employs a JavaScript-based collection of client signals to gather data on user beh...
 

Also Known As

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Shape Security
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.