-New security enhancements announced for the industry’s first converged application delivery and security platform for the AI era’s hybrid multicloud infrastructures;

-Industry’s most comprehensive report on application strategy reveals 96% of organizations are deploying AI models.

By : Mohamed Elkholy

F5 highlighted AI’s rapidly growing influence on global enterprises at the first EMEA leg of its AppWorld 2025 roadshow today, underlining both the opportunities and challenges ahead.

“Modern enterprises face significant challenges when managing the intricate hybrid, multicloud IT landscape where countless applications and APIs are spread across diverse environments. As AI-powered applications become a fundamental part of these distributed systems, complexity is only set to grow,” said Mohammed Abukhater, RVP for the Middle East, Türkiye and Africa at F5, speaking at the event.

According to F5’s newly released 2025 State of Application Strategy Report, 96% of organizations are now deploying AI models, which is up from 25% in 2023.

However, for organizations currently deploying AI models, the number one concern is AI model security. And, while AI tools are more autonomous than ever, operational readiness gaps still exist. 60% of organizations feel bogged down by manual workflows, and 54% claim skill shortages are barriers to AI development.

Central to the AppWorld agenda was how the recently announced F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (F5 ADSP) can help organizations adapt to hybrid, multicloud complexities and meet the demands of modern and AI-powered applications.

F5 Strengthens Security Capabilities in the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform

F5 ADSP is the industry’s first ADC solution that fully converges high-performance load balancing and traffic management with advanced app and API security capabilities into a single platform.

The product of years of investment and innovation, the platform is API-driven and enables consistent policies for every app, in every environment, across all form factors. It can operate seamlessly across high-performance hardware in on-premises data centers, next-generation software in virtualized and hybrid environments, and SaaS for cloud-native environments.

The platform’s capabilities were further bolstered at today’s AppWorld event, with F5 highlighting a series of broad cybersecurity enhancements, including:

•      Cloud-Native Protection with F5 NGINXaaS for Azure with NGINX App Protect: NGINX App Protect as an add-on to NGINXaaS (NGINX as a Service) and is now available for Azure deployments. NGINX App Protect is a modern application security solution designed to provide robust protection against an array of threats, including sophisticated attacks, data breaches, and other malicious activities. By integrating NGINX App Protect with NGINXaaS, customers have access to advanced threat protection against modern threats such as the OWASP Top Ten vulnerabilities and zero-day attacks, real-time traffic inspection, and automated security policy management.

•      Scan LLMs for Vulnerabilities: The F5 ADSP now features web app scanning functionality that has been purpose-built to scan for, identify, and assess security vulnerabilities in large language model (LLM) deployments. This new functionality enables organizations to scan LLMs and run penetration testing to uncover LLM-specific vulnerabilities that map to the OWASP Top Ten for LLM Applications.

•      Expanded API Discovery Tools:  F5 has expanded its powerful API discovery tools for use across the ADSP platform to include all F5 BIG-IP deployments, enabling organizations to get full API visibility for applications that utilize BIG-IP. This allows organizations to easily identify exposed APIs for applications in production, without having to migrate them to the F5 Distributed Cloud Console.

•      Enhanced Client-Side Defense Capabilities for Greater Compliance: As threat actors search for new attack vectors, client-side browser-based attacks are becoming increasingly prevalent. The latest revision of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) v4.0 now requires businesses to have client-side protections deployed to mitigate the risks associated with data exfiltration and malicious JavaScript attacks. F5’s enhanced client-side defense capabilities bolster defense postures by delivering greater visibility into malicious scripts and the actions that they are taking—identifying risky scripts and where they send data.