F5, a global force in app and API security, in collaboration with Forcepoint, renowned for data security, announces a strategic partnership to enhance AI security throughout its lifecycle. This initiative spans from fundamental data discovery and classification to runtime protection and continuous assurance, addressing prevalent challenges in organizations deploying AI across various platforms such as copilots and automated workflows.
As AI integration accelerates, many companies struggle with identifying sensitive data locations, how this data moves within AI systems, and associated risks during deployment. Key areas like data governance, application security, and runtime protections often work in isolation, leading to discrepancies between set security policies and actual AI behavior.
Operationalizing AI with Safety Measures
To confront these issues, Forcepoint integrates its AI-native Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) with the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), which features red teaming and AI guardrails. This combination empowers organizations to deploy AI safely, maintaining control and visibility over sensitive enterprise data. It allows security teams to detect data vulnerabilities in real time, prioritize AI risks, enforce runtime controls, and monitor for atypical behavior.
Continuous telemetry and policy validation ensure AI systems operate securely
Continuous telemetry and policy validation ensure AI systems operate securely, adhering to enterprise governance requirements. John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer at F5, highlights the collaboration's impact on enhancing operational security, stating, “By combining Forcepoint’s deep data intelligence and contextual awareness with F5’s advanced application security and runtime protections, organizations eliminate operational security gaps with unmatched confidence and control in their AI operations.”
Adaptive Data Security Measures
Naveen Palavalli, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Forcepoint, adds that AI has transformed data security, necessitating dynamic, continuous protection. The partnership introduces proactive data and AI risk mitigation measures, covering AI operations' entire lifecycle, including critical runtime layers.
Organizations using AI need to decide which data AI systems should access, determine high-risk use cases, and enforce policies during AI application deployment. The F5-Forcepoint collaboration approaches AI security as a continuous process, linking data governance with runtime enforcement.
Comprehensive AI Security Solutions
This integration assures that AI systems operate on trusted data and continue to protect during production
Forcepoint builds the foundation by enabling organizations to discover, classify, and manage sensitive data across various environments. This AI-powered visibility evaluates data suitability for AI use and identifies initiatives requiring intense scrutiny.
F5 strengthens AI systems at runtime, enforcing policies through APIs, applications, and AI agents. The F5 AI Red Team and AI Guardrails within F5 ADSP provide adversarial testing, detecting threats and protecting AI models from emerging risks. This integration assures that AI systems operate on trusted data and continue to protect during production.
Innovative AI Security Approaches
The F5-Forcepoint partnership aligns data security with API and application protection, providing a practical route for enterprises to embrace AI without overhauling their security frameworks. This week, F5 is showcasing these solutions at the RSA Conference, inviting attendees to explore joint AI security innovations at booth #6365 and the Forcepoint Experience Center on the fourth floor of the St. Regis San Francisco.
F5, the global pioneer in delivering and securing every app and API, and Forcepoint, a global pioneer in data security, announce a new alliance to help enterprises secure AI across its lifecycle—from foundational data discovery and classification through runtime protection and continuous assurance.
As organizations rapidly deploy AI across copilots, assistants, and automated workflows, security practices are struggling to keep pace. Many enterprises face complex challenges in identifying where sensitive data resides, how it flows through AI systems, and the potential risks introduced during production. While data governance, application security, and runtime protections remain crucial, they commonly operate in silos, creating gaps between security policy and AI behavior in practice.
Operationalising AI safely
To solve this problem, Forcepoint’s AI-native Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) data discovery and classification capabilities combine with F5’s red teaming and AI guardrails functionality in the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). This approach provides runtime protections for AI applications, APIs, models, and agents to help organizations operationalise AI safely while maintaining control and visibility over sensitive enterprise data.
The combined capabilities help security teams identify and address data vulnerabilities in real time, prioritise AI use cases based on risk, enforce runtime controls over AI interactions, and monitor systems for misuse or abnormal behavior. Continuous telemetry and policy validation provide ongoing assurance that AI systems are operating securely and in line with enterprise governance requirements.
Security and runtime protections
“Enterprises are moving AI initiatives from experimentation to production faster than most security programs can adapt,” said John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer, F5.
“By combining Forcepoint’s deep data intelligence and contextual awareness with F5’s advanced application security and runtime protections, organizations eliminate operational security gaps with unmatched confidence and control in their AI operations. As AI’s threat surface continues to expand, the combined power of DSPM technologies with F5’s AI Red Team and AI Guardrails equips enterprises with proactive tools to securely scale and govern AI at every stage of its lifecycle.”
Redefined data security
“AI has fundamentally redefined data security, exposing static policies for what they are: inadequate,” said Naveen Palavalli, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Forcepoint.
“F5 and Forcepoint are establishing a new standard of continuous, adaptive protection that follows data from the moment of creation through every stage of its lifecycle, including the runtime layer where AI systems operate, evolve, and expand risk vectors. The threats AI brings require a new category for proactive data and AI risk mitigation, and our partnership is delivering on this today.”
Business-critical data
Organizations adopting AI must determine which data should be accessible to AI systems, which use cases present the greatest risk, and how to enforce policies once AI applications are in production. The F5-Forcepoint partnership addresses these challenges by treating AI security as a continuous lifecycle, connecting data understanding with runtime enforcement.
At the foundation, Forcepoint enables organizations to discover, classify, prioritise, and govern sensitive and business-critical data across cloud, SaaS, endpoint, and enterprise data environments. This AI-powered visibility helps determine which data is appropriate for AI use and which initiatives require the highest level of scrutiny.
Adversarial testing capabilities
F5 then secures AI systems at runtime by enforcing policies across APIs, gateways, applications, and AI agents. The F5 AI Red Team and F5 AI Guardrails functionality within F5 ADSP enables customers to secure AI models through its monitoring and adversarial testing capabilities. By leveraging the solution, customers will defend against threat actors by detecting prompt abuse, preventing data exfiltration, and protecting AI models and workloads from emerging threats.
Together, the companies enable organizations to move from data reality to runtime trust, ensuring AI systems are grounded in trusted data while continuously protected as they operate in production.
AI security innovations
By aligning data security with application and API protection, the F5-Forcepoint partnership provides a pragmatic path for enterprises to adopt AI without rebuilding their security architecture or waiting for fully integrated platforms to mature.
F5 is at the RSA Conference this week, where attendees can visit booth #6365 to learn more about the joint F5-Forcepoint solution and related AI security innovations. Join Forcepoint leaders and experts to explore how organizations are securing data in the age of AI, including the F5-Forcepoint solution, at the Forcepoint Experience Center on the fourth floor of the St. Regis San Francisco during RSA week.
