Making Cybersecurity Personal: We’re All for It.

As more of our business and personal life runs on applications, ensuring app security has become more of a focus for F5. Over the past few years, we’ve built a robust security-focused portfolio that gives our customers a reliable blanket of protection for all their modern and traditional apps regardless of location.?

So when I talk to customers about their security needs, the conversation always includes all the things we protect against. It’s important for customers to see how F5 security leadership benefits them.?How we safeguard?20 billion transactions every month and block up to 2 billion attacks per day.?How we detect and thwart threats from every kind of hacker, bot and bad actor out there. How more than 20,000 companies – large enterprises and mid-size companies across all industries – depend on F5 to keep them safe against threats and exploits ranging from the amateurish to the highly sophisticated and coordinated.???

But truth is, I am most energized when talking not about what we protect?against, but about what our protection is?for.??

Protecting what matters most?

The collective purpose we have at F5 is to bring a better digital world to life.??And while we will never get away from fighting cybercrime, we see cybersecurity as being about something more positive:??protecting people and the things that matter most in our lives.??

I can say that this human-first focus has motivated F5 to become one of the most protective forces in the world today. We know we’re safeguarding more than just apps and data and more than corporate revenues and reputations. Behind every password we protect, there is a human being who is online for a reason – and these are the people we’re working for.??The renter applying for their first mortgage. The employee checking their retirement account. The jobseeker updating their resume. The auntie uploading the graduation video. The gamer who just earned bragging rights for a day or two.??

This is really what our job is about. Whether it’s protecting passwords, credit scores, medical records, family photos, or any of the other precious assets of human life, we have a responsibility to our fellow human beings.??It’s a responsibility we take personally.???

Focusing on personal stories

We just launched a new awareness campaign all about this.??The campaign is called ‘A Force For’ and it puts the spotlight on the power of application security done right.??Through individual stories, this campaign shows how cybersecurity works for real people in all walks of life. This includes the scores of CIOs, CISOs, DevOps, NetOps, SecOps and other IT professionals who count on F5 technologies to keep their business, their employees and their customers safe.??

One of the best things about ‘A Force For’ is how it reflects the human-first values we cherish at F5.??I talk frequently about these values and how essential they are to our company culture and to how we approach cybersecurity.??The campaign has given us a new opportunity to share?the impact of our human-first approach ?with a broader audience.??I hope you have a chance to check it out and let us know what you think.??

Be ‘A Force For’

If you’re wondering what kind of reaction the campaign has had inside F5, let me provide an example. In response to an invitation for employees to add their own voices, I’ve been amazed at the different types of impact our people identify as?a force for . “Social good,” “spreading positive vibes,” “protecting the ones I love,” “fewer sleepless nights,” “protection against fraudsters,” and “fun” are a few examples.????

In that way, I think of ‘A Force For’ as more than an F5 awareness campaign – it’s also a self-awareness campaign that encourages each of us to think about what we want to be a force for.??You don’t even have to be interested in app security to reflect on that.??But if you are, F5 will continue to raise the bar in this field. And as we do, that’s the higher purpose we’ll stay focused on.??