F5, Inc. and Skyfire have announced a strategic partnership aimed at enhancing security for AI agents through a new technological integration.
This collaboration brings Skyfire's Know Your Agent (KYA) protocol to the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), allowing enterprises to differentiate between legitimate AI agent traffic and malicious automated activity. This integration seeks to empower merchants and content providers to identify and engage with verified AI agents, paving the way for authenticated and monetizable interactions.
Enhancing Bot Management Systems
AI agents are increasingly becoming the new drivers of online transactions, autonomously engaging in activities such as browsing, research, and purchasing on behalf of humans. However, current bot management systems that shield merchants from threats like data scraping and fraud can also restrict legitimate AI-driven commerce. The partnership addresses this issue directly; F5 users can now use the KYA protocol to recognize Skyfire-verified agents and grant them access, ensuring these interactions are both secure and profitable.
John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer at F5, stated, “The rise of agentic AI represents a fundamental shift in how commerce happens online. Merchants need the ability to distinguish between a malicious agent or bot and a verified AI agent acting on behalf of a real customer. Through our partnership with Skyfire, F5 customers will gain that visibility. This combined solution enables them to confidently open their doors to the next generation of Internet traffic while maintaining the security posture they depend on.”
Advanced Automated Threats & Solutions
The F5 ADSP's Distributed Cloud Bot Defense is designed to protect large enterprises from advanced automated threats. Through its integration with Skyfire, F5 expands its bot detection and policy enforcement to identify agents carrying KYA tokens.
This allows merchants to: enhance AI traffic verification, gain insight into AI-based requests, safely enable commerce with tokenized credentials, and monetize AI-driven interactions where agents are linked to accountable entities.
Seamless Integration and Deployment
F5's existing bot defense customers can seamlessly validate agents without additional processes
F5's existing bot defense customers can seamlessly validate agents without additional processes. Skyfire's KYA protocol employs standard JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), compatible with prevailing OAuth2, HTTP, and JWKS frameworks, enabling real-time enforcement of access policies without the need for technological overhaul. Merchants interested in utilizing Skyfire's KYAPay for agentic payments can easily integrate into their current systems.
Amir Sarhangi, CEO and co-founder of Skyfire, remarked, “AI agents are the new consumers of the Internet, but they’ve been locked out by security measures designed for a human-only web. Through our partnership with F5, we’re enabling an Internet where verified agents are first-class participants in the digital economy, where identity and security protocols work with them, not against them. F5’s unmatched scale in protecting the world’s largest enterprises makes this a pivotal step toward making agentic commerce a reality everywhere.”
The Skyfire integration with F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense will be available by April 30, 2026, with support for enabling verified agent traffic via the F5 Distributed Cloud Console. Merchants and website owners can find additional information about the integration on the Skyfire website.
F5, Inc., the global pioneer in delivering and securing every app and API, and Skyfire, the agentic commerce platform providing identity and payment infrastructure for AI agents, announces a technology partnership designed to enable enterprises to securely allow verified AI agents while still blocking malicious actors.
The planned integration brings Skyfire’s open Know Your Agent (KYA) protocol to the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), intended to enable merchants and content providers to distinguish legitimate, revenue-generating AI agent traffic from malicious automation.
Bot management systems
AI agents are rapidly becoming the new consumers of the Internet, autonomously browsing, researching, and purchasing on behalf of humans. Yet the same bot management systems that protect merchants from scraping, credential stuffing, and fraud can also block legitimate agent-driven commerce. Today’s announcement addresses that challenge head-on: using KYA, F5 customers will be able to recognize Skyfire-verified agents and grant them appropriate access, transforming what was previously blocked automation into authenticated, monetizable interactions.
“The rise of agentic AI represents a fundamental shift in how commerce happens online,” said John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer at F5. “Merchants need the ability to distinguish between a malicious agent or bot and a verified AI agent acting on behalf of a real customer. Through our partnership with Skyfire, F5 customers will gain that visibility. This combined solution enables them to confidently open their doors to the next generation of Internet traffic while maintaining the security posture they depend on.”
Sophisticated automated threats
F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense functionality within the F5 ADSP protects the web’s largest enterprises from sophisticated automated threats. Through the Skyfire integration, F5 extends its industry-leading bot detection and policy enforcement capabilities to recognize agents carrying Skyfire’s KYA identity tokens. Merchants using F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense can:
- Enhance verification of AI agent traffic through their existing F5 bot defense infrastructure, rather than blocking automated requests indiscriminately.
- Gain visibility into agent identity including agentic AI-based traffic, the agent itself, and the human or enterprise principal behind the request, delivered in the Skyfire KYA token.
- Safely enable agentic commerce by allowing agents to complete standard eCommerce checkout flows using Skyfire’s tokenized payment credentials, preserving the merchant’s existing infrastructure.
- Monetize AI-driven traffic by linking agent requests to accountable, paying actors.
Bot defense customers
F5 bot defense customers are able to validate agents with no additional steps. Customers who want to accept agentic payments via the Skyfire platform can do so easily. The integration is designed to work within merchants’ existing technology stacks.
No re-platforming is required. Skyfire’s KYA protocol uses standard JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) compatible with existing OAuth2, HTTP, and JWKS infrastructure, and F5’s bot defense capabilities interpret these tokens at the edge to enforce access policies in real time.
Identity and security protocols
“AI agents are the new consumers of the Internet, but they’ve been locked out by security measures designed for a human-only web,” said Amir Sarhangi, CEO and co-founder of Skyfire. “Through our partnership with F5, we’re enabling an Internet where verified agents are first-class participants in the digital economy, where identity and security protocols work with them, not against them. F5’s unmatched scale in protecting the world’s largest enterprises makes this a pivotal step toward making agentic commerce a reality everywhere.”
Skyfire integration with F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense will be available by April 30, 2026. F5 customers will be able to enable Skyfireverified agent traffic through the F5 Distributed Cloud Console. Merchants and website owners interested in integrating the Skyfire KYAPay protocol can learn more at skyfire website.
