F5 NGINX App Protect: Denial of Service

With apps and APIs being so critical to organizations, it’s no surprise that they’re such attractive targets to bad actors. Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks are nothing new, but they’ve become much harder to detect as their targets are no longer restricted to the network. DoS attacks against apps are rapidly increasing – impacting performance, availability, and ultimately the bottom line. Security professionals and developers alike need a dynamic solution that protects modern apps without slowing down release velocity.

NGINX App Protect DoS enables security, development, and DevOps teams to:

• Defend against hard-to-detect Layer 7 DoS attacks through user behavior analysis and app health checks
• Improve app resiliency and operational efficiency while reducing costs
• Apply consistent security and control across distributed applications, APIs, and operating environments
• Integrate security seamlessly into NGINX Plus deployments as part of modern app infrastructures

For more details, see our solution brief.

Combat a New Generation of DoS Attacks

NGINX App Protect DoS secures modern, distributed apps and APIs with advanced protection from Layer 7 DoS threats that can avoid detection by traditional tools and strategies. Its combination of automated user and site behavior analysis, proactive health checks, and no‑touch configuration offers a low‑overhead solution to stop common attacks including HTTP GET flood, POST flood, Slowloris, Slow Read, and Slow Post.

Reduce Complexity While Securing Apps

NGINX App Protect DoS is part of the NGINX platform, which means that its strong security controls integrate perfectly into modern application infrastructures where NGINX Plus is deployed – resulting in less complexity, TCO, manual oversight, and tool sprawl when securing and delivering modern apps.

Enable Security to Keep Pace with Development

NGINX App Protect DoS helps with aligning the often‑competing priorities of security and development teams by facilitating a “security as code” model with a lightweight software package, continuous feedback loop for threat mitigation effectiveness, and integration with common DevOps tools via RESTful APIs.

Mitigate Attacks Automatically Based on an Adaptive Statistical Model

NGINX App Protect DoS learns and baselines normal traffic patterns using statistical models and analysis of client behavior and application/API health. It constructs and deploys dynamic signatures to mitigate attacks automatically, then continuously measures mitigation effectiveness and adapts to changing behavior or health conditions.