July 18, 2025

Guest Author: Corey Marshall, Director and Sr. Security Solutions Architect, F5

Today’s app environments are complicated, with most organizations maintaining a mix of traditional and modern applications and 75% operating three or more app deployment models. (Source: F5) Increasingly distributed application environments and architectures create significant security challenges, such as inconsistent access policies across systems. With stolen credentials continuing to be a primary vector in data breaches involving web applications, strong Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls must be part of your application security strategy. (Source: Verizon)

The Modern Application Security Challenge

The days of applications residing solely within well-defined network perimeters are long gone. Today’s applications are everywhere: on legacy systems in corporate data centers, in private or public cloud environments, and at edge locations. Microservices-based applications may span more than one environment, and AI-powered applications rely on numerous APIs to connect inference with AI models and data sources. This distribution often results in a mix of disconnected security solutions that require significant management overhead and offer inconsistent protection. When users can access applications from anywhere, and applications themselves are distributed across multiple environments, a new approach to security is needed.

With secure application access, only authorized users can use applications, regardless of where those applications are hosted or how they’re architected. However, enabling secure access for every app in your portfolio is easier said than done, especially if you support a number of legacy applications. Older applications may not support modern authentication standards, creating significant security challenges.

Why Access Management Matters for Your Apps

When application access controls are inconsistent or inadequate, your apps face risks due to:

• Credential-Based Attacks: Stolen credentials remain one of the most common vectors in cyberattacks targeting applications. Without strong identity controls or zero trust principles, compromised credentials can provide attackers with broad access to sensitive systems and data.
• Inconsistent Security Posture: When each application environment has its own authentication and authorization mechanisms, security gaps inevitably emerge that can make it easier for threat actors to gain access.
• Poor User Experience: If users must remember multiple credentials for different applications, they often resort to insecure practices like password reuse or writing down credentials. Identify federation has gained traction as a solution to address login fatigue, with 91% of organizations now using it, up from only 35% in 2016. (Source: F5)
• Limited Visibility: Without centralized access management, organizations struggle to monitor user activity across applications, making it difficult to detect suspicious behavior that could indicate a breach in progress.

To effectively mitigate these risks, you need an IAM strategy that balances security with usability across your entire application portfolio. Organizations that implement robust access management for their applications not only strengthen their security posture but also improve operational efficiency and user satisfaction.

What Application Access Looks Like for Modern Organizations

Consider a financial services company that operates a customer portal on a public cloud, a legacy loan processing system in its on-premises data center, and a new mobile banking app that connects to multiple APIs. When a customer service representative needs to help a client, they likely need separate credentials for the legacy and modern apps, which can lead to lax security practices like credential re-use. Meanwhile, the legacy loan system lacks modern authentication, creating a blind spot that security teams struggle to monitor.

When the company suffers a credential stuffing attack, the lack of zero-trust controls means that an attacker who gains access can move laterally within the organization to cause more damage. At the same time, the security team struggles to contain the breach quickly as multiple siloed tools slow the response.

Best Practices for Secure Application Access

Securing application access across diverse environments, like the one illustrated above, requires clear, consistent controls that work across both modern and legacy systems. While every organization’s path will differ, several proven practices help reduce risk and improve visibility and accountability without introducing unnecessary friction for users. To improve secure application access, organizations can:

• Adopt Zero Trust: A zero trust approach assumes that no user or device should be inherently trusted, whether the request originates from inside or outside your network. Instead, every access request is continuously verified based on context, identity, and device. Zero Trust reduces the blast radius if credentials are compromised and limits lateral movement within your environment.
• Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Strong authentication is a cornerstone of modern application security. MFA adds an extra layer of defense by requiring additional verification beyond a password, like a code sent to a trusted device, biometric reading taken at the time of authentication, or a generated token that only works for a matter of seconds. With MFA, stolen credentials won’t be enough to grant attackers access to your systems.
• Simplify with Single Sign-On (SSO): SSO solutions allow users to authenticate once and securely access multiple applications. This not only streamlines the user experience, but also reduces password fatigue and lowers the risk of unsafe practices like password reuse. SSO can also curb shadow IT by making it easy for users to access approved applications.
• Enforce Contextual Access Policies: Access across diverse environments cannot be static. Unusual activity detection can be a quick way to spot a potential attack or infiltration attempt. As such, access policies should evaluate factors like user role, location, device health, and time of day before granting access. Context-aware policies help balance security and usability, ensuring that the right people have the right level of access–no more, no less.

By combining these principles, organizations can protect applications consistently, detect threats faster, and deliver a smoother experience for users and admins alike.

Protect Applications Against a Variety of Attacks

Through strategic partnerships with industry leaders like F5 and identity management vendors, organizations can extend secure application access best practices, including zero trust, MFA, SSO, and context-aware policy enforcement  to all applications, regardless of location or compatible authentication systems.

While identity is key to your application security strategy, organizations also need to protect against other common threats, such as malicious bots, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and API vulnerabilities. F5® can also  secure applications against both credential-based attacks and malicious traffic.

As applications continue to become more distributed, implementing a strong IAM foundation alongside robust application security measures is necessary to protect your business. By deploying a comprehensive protection strategy, organizations can reduce your attack surface while improving the user experience.

Contact us to learn more or get a demo.