F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Radware DefensePro comparison

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.  

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network 
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for 
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every 
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this 
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the 
information requests are always only seconds away. 

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to 
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official 
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project 
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to 
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in 
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device) 
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology 
available to them at all times. 

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement 

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities 

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare 
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and 
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your 
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a 
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage 
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare 
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very 
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is a high-performance, full-proxy network security solution designed to protect networks and data centers against incoming threats that enter the network. Built on F5’s industry-leading BIG-IP hardware and software platforms, BIG-IP AFM provides a scalable platform that delivers the flexible performance and control needed to mitigate aggressive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and protocol attacks before they overwhelm and degrade applications and infrastructure availability.

For service providers, BIG-IP AFM IPS does even more, protecting the network edge and performing traffic inspection and protocol adherence for prevalent service provider protocols such as SS7, Diameter, HTTP/2, GTP, SCTP and SIP traffic coming into the network over UDP, TCP, and SCTP.

Radware DefensePro is a next-generation robust Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) solution. The solution provides real-time network intrusion prevention that will protect an organization's valuable ecosystem from being damaged or immobilized by malicious attacks or threats. Radware DefensePro will aggressively protect an organization's network to negate any potential downtime and minimize any vulnerabilities caused by theft, malware, ransomware, or any other potential network attack scenario.

Radware DefensePro is also very effective in defending against IoT-based, Burst, DNS, and TLS/SSL attacks to ensure organizations are able to stay protected against emerging network multivector attacks, ransom DDoS campaigns, IoT botnets, phantom floods, and many other types of cyberattacks common in the marketplace today.

Radware DefensePro provides users with the following branded security protocols:

• Reputation Engine: A real-time anti-phishing, anti-trojan protocol that is able to discover any potential threats that have been developed to cause disruption in the financial sector, information theft, and by the dissemination of malware. 
• Denial of Service Protection: This protocol is designed to protect against DDoS attacks by discovering any potential threats and any additional anomalous behavior in real-time and will thoroughly investigate each and every new connection to ensure their validity to the network and maintain security.
• Network Behavior Analysis (NBA): This protocol utilizes a Radware patented real-time behavioral-based next-generation signature technology to intuitively discover suspicious behaviors that may predict an attack. The NBA protocol immediately uses that data to block the attack.
• Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Built on an intuitive stateful static signature detection technology, IPS will glean from systematic and emergency updates to comprehensively protect the organization's network.

Radware DefensePro has many valuable benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

• Prevent system downtime.
• Minimize employee downtime.
• Maintain peak performance.
• Minimize network attack surface.
• Minimize overall risk.
• Improve response time to potential threats.
• Improve defense and security.
• Protect the organization's brand and reputation.
• Cost-effective
• Excellent Return on Investment

Regrettably, DDoS attacks are on the rise in today’s busy marketplace.  As these types of attacks become more sophisticated and pervasive, it is incumbent on today’s busy enterprise organizations to ensure they have an effective and aggressive DDoS solution in place. Radware DefensePro is a valued-added effective solution to consider.

Reviews from Real Users

“The most important thing for me right now in the Radware portfolio is that Radware went to the cloud and has a flexible model based on virtual machines that can be delivered in our data center model, which could be delivered via the public cloud. That’s the big advantage of Radware, from my perspective.” A Senior Product Manager - ICT Solutions, Marketing, and Development of Cybersecurity at a comms service provider

“The important features include automated protection and defense against many attacks. It's important that our networks are protected in the Radware cloud.” John P., Network Architect at Corporación Nacional de Telecomunicaciones

“In terms of the environment that I work in, the SSL, DNS, and HTTP are all valuable features. This is a very technologically simple and effective solution.” Aliasgar R. System Engineer at Check Point Software Technologies