F5 Networks Configuring BIG-IP Advanced WAF: Web Application Firewall (formerly ASM)

Master the F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall to fortify your web security and protect against malicious threats, perfect for IT security and network administrators aiming to enhance their skills in today's evolving digital landscape.

Course Thumbnail

Essential Skills Gained

Checkmark

Deploy and configure the F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall

Checkmark

Identify and mitigate web-based attack vectors

Checkmark

Implement security policy tuning and traffic monitoring

Checkmark

Use advanced tools for proactive threat detection and management

Format

  • Instructor-led
  • 4 days with lectures and hands-on labs.

Audience

  • Security Administrators
  • Network Administrators
  • IT Security Managers
  • Cybersecurity Analysts

Description

In this 4 day course, students are provided with a functional understanding of how to deploy, tune, and operate F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall to protect their web applications from HTTP-based attacks. The course includes lecture, hands-on labs, and discussion about different F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall tools for detecting and mitigating threats from multiple attack vectors such web scraping, Layer 7 Denial of Service, brute force, bots, code injection, and zero day exploits.

Calendar icon

Upcoming Course Dates

July 14-17, 2025

7:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Virtual: Online - America/Los_Angeles

Enroll

$4840

September 8-11, 2025

7:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Virtual: Online - America/Los_Angeles

Guaranteed to Run

Enroll

$4840

Course Outline

Download PDF

Lesson 1: Setting Up the BIG-IP System

  1. Introducing the BIG-IP System

  2. Initially Setting Up the BIG-IP System

  3. Archiving the BIG-IP System Configuration

  4. Leveraging F5 Support Resources and Tools

Lesson 2: Traffic Processing with BIG-IP

  1. Identifying BIG-IP Traffic Processing Objects

  2. Overview of Network Packet Flow

  3. Understanding Profiles

  4. Overview of Local Traffic Policies

  5. Visualizing the HTTP Request Flow

Lesson 3: Web Application Concepts

  1. Overview of Web Application Request Processing

  2. Web Application Firewall: Layer 7 Protection

  3. F5 Advanced WAF Layer 7 Security Checks

  4. Overview of Web Communication Elements

  5. Overview of the HTTP Request Structure

  6. Examining HTTP Responses

  7. How F5 Advanced WAF Parses File Types, URLs, and Parameters

  8. Using the Fiddler HTTP Proxy

Lesson 4: Common Web Application Vulnerabilities

  1. A Taxonomy of Attacks: The Threat Landscape

  2. What Elements of Application Delivery are Targeted?

  3. Common Exploits Against Web Applications

Lesson 5: Security Policy Deployment

  1. Defining Learning

  2. Comparing Positive and Negative Security Models

  3. The Deployment Workflow

  4. Policy Type: How Will the Policy Be Applied

  5. Policy Template: Determines the Level of Protection

  6. Policy Templates: Automatic or Manual Policy Building

  7. Assigning Policy to Virtual Server

  8. Deployment Workflow: Using Advanced Settings

  9. Selecting the Enforcement Mode

  10. The Importance of Application Language

  11. Configure Server Technologies

  12. Verify Attack Signature Staging

  13. Viewing Requests

  14. Security Checks Offered by Rapid Deployment

  15. Defining Attack Signatures

  16. Using Data Guard to Check Responses

Lesson 6: Policy Tuning and Violations

  1. Post-Deployment Traffic Processing

  2. Defining Violations

  3. Defining False Positives

  4. How Violations are Categorized

  5. Violation Rating: A Threat Scale

  6. Defining Staging and Enforcement

  7. Defining Enforcement Mode

  8. Defining the Enforcement Readiness Period

  9. Reviewing the Definition of Learning

  10. Defining Learning Suggestions

  11. Choosing Automatic or Manual Learning

  12. Defining the Learn, Alarm and Block Settings

  13. Interpreting the Enforcement Readiness Summary

  14. Configuring the Blocking Response Page

Lesson 7: Attack Signatures & Threat Campaigns

  1. Defining Attack Signatures

  2. Attack Signature Basics

  3. Creating User-Defined Attack Signatures

  4. Defining Simple and Advanced Edit Modes

  5. Defining Attack Signature Sets

  6. Defining Attack Signature Pools

  7. Understanding Attack Signatures and Staging

  8. Updating Attack Signatures

  9. Defining Threat Campaigns

  10. Deploying Threat Campaigns

Lesson 8: Positive Security Policy Building

  1. Defining and Learning Security Policy Components

  2. Defining the Wildcard

  3. Defining the Entity Lifecycle

  4. Choosing the Learning Scheme

  5. How to Learn: Never (Wildcard Only)

  6. How to Learn: Always

  7. How to Learn: Selective

  8. Reviewing the Enforcement Readiness Period: Entities

  9. Viewing Learning Suggestions and Staging Status

  10. Violations Without Learning Suggestions

  11. Defining the Learning Score

  12. Defining Trusted and Untrusted IP Addresses

  13. How to Learn: Compact

Lesson 9: Cookies and Other Headers

  1. F5 Advanced WAF Cookies: What to Enforce

  2. Defining Allowed and Enforced Cookies

  3. Configuring Security Processing on HTTP headers

Lesson 10: Reporting and Logging

  1. Overview: Big Picture Data

  2. Reporting: Build Your Own View

  3. Reporting: Chart based on filters

  4. Brute Force and Web Scraping Statistics

  5. Viewing F5 Advanced WAF Resource Reports

  6. PCI Compliance: PCI-DSS 3.0

  7. The Attack Expert System

  8. Viewing Traffic Learning Graphs

  9. Local Logging Facilities and Destinations

  10. How to Enable Local Logging of Security Events

  11. Viewing Logs in the Configuration Utility

  12. Exporting Requests

  13. Logging Profiles: Build What You Need

  14. Configuring Response Logging

Lesson 11: Lab Project 1

Lesson 12: Advanced Parameter Handling

  1. Defining Parameter Types

  2. Defining Static Parameters

  3. Defining Dynamic Parameters

  4. Defining Dynamic Parameter Extraction Properties

  5. Defining Parameter Levels

  6. Other Parameter Considerations

Lesson 13: Automatic Policy Building

  1. Overview of Automatic Policy Building

  2. Defining Templates Which Automate Learning

  3. Defining Policy Loosening

  4. Defining Policy Tightening

  5. Defining Learning Speed: Traffic Sampling

  6. Defining Track Site Changes

Lesson 14: Web Application Vulnerability Scanner Integration

  1. Integrating Scanner Output

  2. Importing Vulnerabilities

  3. Resolving Vulnerabilities

  4. Using the Generic XML Scanner XSD file

Lesson 15: Deploying Layered Policies

  1. Defining a Parent Policy

  2. Defining Inheritance

  3. Parent Policy Deployment Use Cases

Lesson 16: Login Enforcement and Brute Force Mitigation

  1. Defining Login Pages

  2. Configuring Automatic Detection of Login Pages

  3. Defining Session Tracking

  4. What Are Brute Force Attacks?

  5. Brute Force Protection Configuration

  6. Defining Source-Based Protection

  7. Source-Based Brute Force Mitigations

  8. Defining Credentials Stuffing

  9. Mitigating Credentials Stuffing

Lesson 17: Reconnaissance with Session Tracking

  1. Defining Session Tracking

  2. Configuring Actions Upon Violation Detection

Lesson 18: Layer 7 DoS Mitigation

  1. Defining Denial of Service Attacks

  2. Defining the DoS Protection Profile

  3. Overview of TPS-based DoS Protection

  4. Create a DoS Logging Profile

  5. Applying TPS Mitigations

  6. Defining Behavioral and Stress-Based Detection

Lesson 19: Advanced Bot Protection

  1. Classifying Client with the Bot Defense Profile

  2. Defining Bot Signatures

  3. Defining Proactive Bot Defense

  4. Defining Behavioral and Stress-Based Detection

  5. Defining Behavioral DoS Mitigation

Lesson 20: Form Encryption using DataSafe

  1. Targeting Elements of Application Delivery

  2. Exploiting the Document Object Model

  3. Protecting Applications Using DataSafe

  4. The Order of Operations for URL Classification

Lesson 21: Review and Final Labs

Your Team has Unique Training Needs.

Your team deserves training as unique as they are.

Let us tailor the course to your needs at no extra cost.