F5 WAF vs FortiWeb: Making the Smart Choice for Application Security

What is F5 Web Application Firewall (WAF)? 

F5 Web Application Firewall is an enterprise-grade WAF built into the F5 BIG-IP platform. Known for its high-performance application delivery and Layer 7 security. F5 WAF offers advanced security controls that protect against OWASP Top 10 threats bots, and volumetric attacks.

What is Fortinet FortiWeb?

 FortiWeb is Fortinet’s AI-powered WAF solution designed to protect web applications, APIs, and microservices. It combines signature-based detection with machine learning to deliver application-layer threat protection, and is tightly integrated into Fortinet’s Security Fabric.

Fortinet offers both integrated WAF capabilities via FortiGate firewalls (suitable for basic needs) and the more robust FortiWeb appliance for enterprises with complex application environments.

FortiWeb supports high-security use cases and complex web apps, whereas FortiGate’s WAF is more cost-effective for small to mid-sized businesses.

Advantages of F5 WAF

Distributed Cloud Mesh

Distributed Cloud Mesh offers a unique, F5-exclusive mesh architecture designed for secure, reliable connectivity across multi-cloud and edge environments. Unlike traditional service meshes, it uses a proxy-based, zero-trust model to provide application access without exposing network connectivity—enhancing security by design.

Backed by F5’s global network backbone, it delivers deterministic performance with integrated service discovery, health checks, micro-segmentation, and application policies. Its globally distributed load balancer intelligently routes traffic using BGP-based health insights, enabling seamless scalability and resilience across any environment.

Granular and Customizable Traffic Control

F5’s iRules and iApps offer flexibility for configuring custom traffic behavior. You can define highly granular security and routing policies based on headers, cookies, payloads, or even user behavior.

You can define logic at the request/response level, block specific behaviors, manipulate headers, or log custom data.This level of control is ideal for applications with non-standard behavior or complex business logic.

DevOps-Friendly Automation

F5 provides better compatibility with DevOps toolchains like Ansible, GitLab, and Terraform. This enables greater agility in CI/CD environments, particularly for teams that prioritize infrastructure as code (IaC).

Cloud-Scale DDoS Defense with Silverline

F5’s Silverline cloud services offer on-demand scrubbing for volumetric DDoS attacks. When combined with F5 Advanced WAF, it delivers end-to-end protection from volumetric, protocol, and application layer threats.

Advantages of FortiWeb

Advanced Bot Mitigation

FortiWeb has a strong edge in bot mitigation. It combines machine learning with behavioral analysis, deception techniques, and CAPTCHA enforcement to distinguish between human users, legitimate bots, and malicious bots.

FortiWeb tracks user behavior over time, identifying repeat offenders and reducing friction for real users. The system also integrates with FortiView, its advanced analytics dashboard, allowing teams to visualize bot activity and differentiate between good and bad bots effectively.

AI-based Threat Analytics

FortiWeb leverages AI-powered threat analytics and deep machine learning to detect threats with a higher degree of precision. It stands out for correlating large volumes of alerts to identify meaningful attack patterns and reduce false positives—a common problem in many WAFs. This helps security teams focus only on critical threats without being overwhelmed.

Threat Intelligence is optionally provided to users subscribed to F5’s Always On and Always Available services.

API Protection and Schema Validation

F5 and FortiWeb both offer strong API security, but with different approaches. F5 excels in automatic API discovery, especially in environments where API specifications are missing, by analyzing real-time traffic and dynamically importing schemas to create a positive security model. It is particularly useful for managing Shadow APIs.

In contrast, FortiWeb provides continuous API protection through schema validation for OpenAPI, XML, and JSON, integrated directly into the CI/CD pipeline, ensuring that API updates are automatically protected. While F5’s proactive discovery adapts to undefined APIs, FortiWeb focuses on ongoing protection and validation, making it ideal for organizations with structured APIs and fast-paced, secure deployments.

Integration and Automation

 FortiWeb deeply integrates into the Fortinet Security Fabric, allowing seamless collaboration with FortiGate, FortiSandbox, and other Fortinet tools. This enhances protection through synchronized threat intelligence and shared contextual data across the environment. It also integrates with vulnerability scanners. When vulnerabilities are detected, FortiWeb can quickly convert them into dynamic security rules, providing temporary protection until the application code is properly fixed by developers.

F5 also supports automation but focuses more on infrastructure orchestration and DevSecOps integration rather than deep security analytics or vulnerability remediation. Technical support is available but may require premium support upgrades, which could add to the overall cost.

DDoS Mitigation Capabilities

Fortinet includes FortiDDoS, which operates on a massively parallel architecture to detect and mitigate attacks from the very first packet—without waiting for signature updates. This real-time defense is especially effective against zero-day DDoS attacks.

F5 provides DDoS protection too, but its strategy is less autonomous and depends more on signature-based approaches.

An Alternative to F5 WAF and FortiWeb: AppTrana

While F5 uses automation and AI for threat detection, it struggles with false positives and often requires manual tuning and constant oversight. AppTrana offers a unique advantage by combining machine learning with expert validation, ensuring zero false positives and delivering precise protection without manual intervention.

AppTrana comes with a built-in DAST scanner that continuously scans applications for vulnerabilities. This not only provides real-time visibility into the security posture but also enables automatic remediation through virtual patching—helping security teams quickly address risks without relying on manual intervention or external tools.

AppTrana also includes a dedicated managed services team, acting as an extension of your security operations, to support you with DDoS monitoring, virtual patching, false positive testing, and incident response optimization.  All AppTrana plans include unmetered DDoS protection at no extra charge, providing consistent, predictable security.

Key Features of AppTrana

SwyftComply

AppTrana stands out by offering the unique advantage of SwyftComply,enabling fast, autonomous patching of vulnerabilities instantly. This rapid deployment ensures that your systems are always compliant with industry standards, helping you meet regulatory requirements without delays or disruptions.

Other vendors such as F5 and FortiWeb don’t provide clear guarantees on the speed of virtual patch deployment for known vulnerabilities. AppTrana’s ability to deliver zero vulnerability reports with its automated patching process ensures a smoother and more reliable path to compliance.

Positive Security Model

AppTrana’s automation of the positive security model for APIs offers enhanced security by automatically discovering APIs, scanning for vulnerabilities, conducting penetration testing, and creating security policies. This approach is particularly beneficial for teams lacking Swagger or Postman documentation.

Origin Server Protection

AppTrana ensures that your origin server is always protected, adding an extra layer of security, making sure your infrastructure remains secure even during a DDoS attack.

Block Mode for Real-Time Security

Unlike most WAFs—where only about 53% of applications run in block mode—AppTrana ensures that every onboarded application is protected in full block mode from day one. This eliminates the risk of allowing threats like cross-site scripting or code injections to slip through under “log-only” settings.

To guarantee zero disruption, AppTrana assigns a solution engineering team to actively manage each deployment, providing 14 days of oversight to fine-tune configurations and avoid false positives. Even after going live, the team continues to monitor for false positives—ensuring safe, effective blocking without manual tuning.

Feature Comparison Table: F5 vs FortiWeb

Here is a detailed feature comparison table for Fortiweb, AppTrana, and F5:

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