The combined strengths of F5 and Forcepoint via the new partnership focused on makes for a “ marriage made in heaven, rather than a marriage of convenience,” F5’s VP of AI Jimmy White tells CRN.
F5 is joining forces with cybersecurity specialist Forcepoint on the creation of an offering to help businesses secure enterprise AI across the entire lifecycle, the two companies revealed at RSA 2026.
The new partnership takes aim at a problem looming over many enterprises as AI is rapidly being deployed. Across many popular AI tools, assistants, and automated workflows, security practices are struggling to keep pace, especially as it relates to potentially sensitive data moving through these tools. The collaboration is poised to provide 360-degree protection, addressing data discovery, classification, and runtime security, Jimmy White, vice president of AI at F5, told CRN.
The joint offering combines the strong suits for both companies — Forcepoint’s data discovery and classification capabilities that can identify and prioritize sensitive enterprise data, along with F5’s runtime protections for AI applications, APIs, models, and agents that can enforce policies and provide continuous assurance in production, the two companies said.
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From a product perspective, the partnership will pair Forcepoint’s AI-native data security posture management (DSPM) data discovery and classification capabilities with F5’s red teaming and AI guardrails functionality in its flagship F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP). The combination will offer runtime protections for AI applications, APIs, models, and agents, the companies said.
“There’s no AI without data, and there’s no security without [understanding] the actual flow of data and red teaming to make sure that there’s not gaps that haven’t been found,” White said. “When you do find those gaps, you need to then add policies and controls to make sure that they’re solved and you have a better security posture all over.”
From the partner lens, the combined offering can also open the door for solution providers to bring their own value-add to the table in the form of AI risk assessments, managed runtime protection, or ongoing AI governance services, White added.
The partnership between F5 and Forcepoint was a natural fit because both companies have similar customer profiles, including large, Fortune 500 enterprises and many companies in the fintech space that have strict security and regulation requirements, White said.
“That’s where Forcepoint and F5 come together,” he said. “We’re already in those verticals [and] already protecting for those regulations, and now we’re adding additional controls required for API use cases in those exact same scenarios. It’s a bit of a marriage made in heaven scenario, rather than a marriage of convenience.”
White, who now leads AI efforts at F5, joined the company through its acquisition of AI security vendor CalypsoAI in 2025 where he served as CTO.
F5 earlier this month at its annual conference AppWorld 2026 reinforced its unified application delivery and security platform by bolstering its flagship offering with more security and observability features. The company’s CEO François Locoh‑Donou told CRN that AI is marking a once‑in‑a‑generation inflection point for application delivery and security, with partners at the center of that opportunity.
