F5 Accelerates AI Security With Integrated Runtime Protection for Enterprise AI at Scale

Key Terms

prompt injection technical

A prompt injection is a deliberate attempt to trick an AI system by inserting misleading or malicious instructions into the text it reads, causing the system to behave in unintended ways or reveal sensitive information. Like slipping a fake note into a stack of instructions, it matters to investors because it can lead to data breaches, regulatory breaches, faulty decisions, reputational damage, and unexpected costs for companies that rely on AI-driven tools.

jailbreak attacks technical

Jailbreak attacks are actions that bypass built‑in security rules to make a device, system or software do things it was not allowed to do — like an intruder finding a way to pick a lock and roam inside a house. For investors, these attacks matter because they can expose sensitive data, enable fraud, disrupt trading systems or lead to costly regulatory penalties and loss of customer trust, all of which can hurt a company’s value.

gdpr regulatory

General Data Protection Regulation is a law that sets rules for how organizations must collect, store and use personal data about people, and gives individuals rights over that data. It matters to investors because noncompliance can lead to large fines, higher operating costs and damaged reputation, while strong compliance can be a competitive advantage—think of it as a strict safety code for handling customer information.

eu ai act regulatory

The EU AI Act is a European law that sets rules for how artificial intelligence systems can be developed, marketed and used, grouping applications by risk and requiring safety checks, transparency and oversight. For investors it matters because the law changes costs, approval timelines and market access for AI products—like a building code for software that can raise compliance bills for some firms while creating a safer, more predictable market that benefits companies that follow the rules.

api security technical

API security is the practice of protecting the digital doorways that allow software systems to communicate, share data and perform actions on behalf of users. It uses controls like access checks and encryption to prevent unauthorized access, data leaks or malicious use—think of it as locking and monitoring doors in a building that also transmit sensitive documents. For investors, weak API security can lead to outages, regulatory fines, customer loss and reputational damage that materially harms revenue and stock value.

web application firewalls technical

A web application firewall (WAF) is a security tool that sits between internet users and a company's online applications, watching and filtering incoming traffic to stop common hacking techniques that steal data or take websites offline. For investors, a WAF matters because it helps reduce the risk of costly breaches, downtime and regulatory fines—like a bouncer checking IDs—thereby protecting revenue, customer trust and company value.

ddos defenses technical

DDoS defenses are the tools and practices a company uses to stop large, coordinated surges of internet traffic that aim to overwhelm its online services. Think of them as a traffic cop and floodgate that filter out malicious or excessive requests so legitimate users can still get through. For investors, strong DDoS defenses matter because outages or slowdowns can directly hurt sales, customer trust, regulatory compliance, and a company’s stock value.

adversarial testing technical

Adversarial testing is the practice of deliberately simulating attacks or hostile conditions on a system, model, or process to uncover weaknesses before real attackers find them. Think of it like hiring someone to try to pick the locks or trick a machine so you can fix the flaws; for investors, results reveal risks to operations, data security, regulatory compliance and future earnings, and can affect a company’s value and trustworthiness.

F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team extend platform capabilities with continuous testing, adaptive governance, and real-time protection

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced general availability of F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team, two industry-leading solutions that secure mission-critical enterprise AI systems. With these releases, F5 is the only vendor providing a comprehensive end-to-end lifecycle approach to AI runtime security, including enhanced ability to connect and protect AI agents with both out-of-the-box and custom guardrails.

These pioneering security offerings align with customer needs for flexible deployment, model-agnostic protection, and the ability to tailor and adapt AI security policies in real time—drawing on F5’s deep expertise at the application layer, where AI interactions occur. F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team are already deployed at leading Fortune 500 enterprises across multiple industries globally, including in highly regulated financial services and healthcare organizations.

“Traditional enterprise governance cannot keep up with the velocity of AI,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5. “When policy lags adoption, you get data leaks and unpredictable model behavior. Organizations need defenses that are as dynamic as the models themselves. F5 AI Guardrails secures the traffic in real time, turning a black box into a transparent system, while F5 AI Red Team proactively finds vulnerabilities before they reach production. This allows organizations to stop fearing risk and start shipping apps and features with confidence.”

As enterprises accelerate AI adoption across customer experiences, internal workflows, and mission-critical decision making, the risk landscape is rapidly shifting. Organizations now grapple not only with external attackers, but also adversarial manipulation of models, data leakage, unpredictable user interactions, and growing compliance obligations. By pairing F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team with traditional infrastructure protection—including API security, web application firewalls, and DDoS defenses—enterprises can secure AI systems alongside existing applications, improving visibility and policy consistency without relying on fragmented point solutions.

Building on F5’s application-layer expertise and the company’s broader Application Delivery and Security Platform, these AI runtime security offerings extend F5’s leadership in securing modern applications and APIs into the AI era.

Transforming risk into confident AI deployment

As organizations race to operationalize AI, most security tools address only fragments of the rapidly expanding attack surface. F5 is one of the first vendors delivering a complete AI security solution—combining real-time runtime defenses with offensive security testing and pre-built attack patterns to help organizations deploy AI with confidence. Doing so requires addressing the risks inherent in how AI systems operate in practice, where models vary widely in capability and behavior, and also interact with sensitive data, users, APIs, and other systems in ways legacy tools weren’t built to manage.

F5 AI Guardrails provides a model-agnostic runtime security layer designed to protect every AI model, app, and agent across every cloud and deployment environment with consistent policy enforcement. As the number of models grows into the millions, AI Guardrails delivers consistent protection against adversarial threats such as prompt injection and jailbreak attacks, prevents sensitive data leakage, and enforces corporate and regulatory obligations, including GDPR and the EU AI Act. Uniquely, AI Guardrails also delivers in-depth observability and auditability of AI inputs and outputs so teams can see not just what the model did, but why it did it—a core need for governance and compliance in regulated industries.

Continuous assurance for evolving AI systems

Complementing runtime protection, F5 AI Red Team delivers scalable, automated adversarial testing that simulates both common and obscure threat vectors, powered by the industry’s preeminent AI vulnerability database—adding over 10,000 new attack techniques every month as real-world threats evolve. AI Red Team reveals where models can provide dangerous or unpredictable outputs, and its insights feed directly back into AI Guardrails policies so defenses evolve as threats and models themselves change. Together, AI Guardrails and AI Red Team establish a continuous AI security feedback loop: proactive assurance, adaptive runtime enforcement, centralized governance, and ongoing improvement.

F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team are available now as part of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform.

Supporting materials

• Overview: F5 AI Guardrails
• Overview: F5 AI Red Team
• Blog: What are AI guardrails? Evolving safety beyond foundational model providers
• Blog: Govern your AI present and anticipate your AI future
• Blog: AI data privacy: Guardrails that protect sensitive data
• Blog: AI security through the analyst lens

About F5

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.

For more information visit f5.com
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F5 is a trademark, service mark, or tradename of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Source: F5, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114436392/en/

Jenna Becker

F5

(415) 857-2864

j.becker@f5.com

Holly Lancaster

We. Communications

(415) 547-7054

hlancaster@wecommunications.com

Source: F5, Inc.