Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Fed Tech Talk’s audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne.

This week on Federal Tech Talk, host John Gilroy interviews Kara Sprague, senior vice president and general manager of Application Services for F5 Networks.

Sprague’s focus is on enhancing the performance and security of applications. The interview ranges from app servers to micro services to application delivery controllers to the general concept of infrastructure security.

She brings a fresh new perspective to the discussion — and looks at security from the view of the app itself.  During the interview, Sprague mentions that the world has 250 million application workloads with one-third mission critical. It is no wonder that malicious actors dismiss VPNs and firewalls and focus on attacking the app itself.

Deep understanding of protecting the app can lead to increases in speed and transparency. One of the technical topics Sprague brought up was the management of containers. With products like Kubernetes, one can manage some of the complexity — F5 solutions allow network professionals and app developers to better protect and optimize modern, container-based applications.

Sprague makes the provocative statement that F5 Networks has the goal of protecting any app, any device, anywhere. This kind of ubiquitous protection is a tremendous challenge in the world of federal information technology. Each agency has unique requirements, and the DoD has such a dynamic environment and daily attacks that F5 Networks could provide some ideas to accomplish the noble task of Zero Trust.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.