As advanced persistent threats (APTs) dominate the malware landscape, signature-based detection no longer provides adequate security for this fast-evolving threat environment. Signature-based detection relies on vendors providing signature updates to their platforms. Unfortunately, many of today’s threats are targeted to infiltrate a specific organization, used once, and then repackaged and modified to evade detection.

In contrast to limited intrusion detection and prevention solutions, advanced threat protection (ATP) systems trap and execute suspicious objects before they cross the wire, ensuring inspected traffic does not pose a danger to the endpoint. ATP systems can also stop a threat that has never been seen before, such as a zero-day attack.

Since ATP systems are so effective at stopping malware, more of these systems are being deployed to protect an increasing share of ingress and egress traffic. However, increased deployment of ATP systems has uncovered three areas where they can be further strengthened by use of complementary technologies that increase their effectiveness: SSL/TLS assistance, high availability, and traffic steering. This paper looks at how F5 and FireEye solutions work together to deliver enhanced performance and improved results across these three areas.