User Behavior Analysis

Published April 5, 2023 | Last modified March 11, 2025

Objective

This document provides instructions on how to enable User Behavior Analysis (UBA) using the F5® Distributed Cloud Services Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) features. The user behavior analysis covers the following:

Clear suspicious behavior - This is based on security events such as the following:
- WAF security events generated by a user
- Login failures
- L7 policy denies
Anomalous behavior - This is identified by analyzing behavioral aspects of user activity.

Note: The user in this context is mapped by the requesting IP address.

Using the instructions provided in this document, you can enable the user behavior for your application and monitor the related anomalies and events in the load balancer monitoring.

Prerequisites

F5 Distributed Cloud Account

Note: If you do not have an account, see Getting Started with Console.

One or more applications deployed on Distributed Cloud site and services configured.

Note: See App Management for more information. See Site Management for site creation instructions.

Configuration

Configuration Sequence

The following table presents the sequence of activities in enabling the UBA:

Activity	Description
Create App Type	Create app type and configure the user behavior analysis features.
Create App Settings	Create the app settings object and associate with the app type.
Monitor User Behavior	Monitor the load balancer to check for anomalies detected and reported for user behavior.

Create App Type

To enable user behavior analysis for your application services, it is required to first enable it for those services using the app type object.

The app type object is created in the shared namespace. The load balancers of that app type in different namespaces need to be assigned with the label of the app type object.

Perform the following to create app type and enable generating the user behavior model.

Step 1: Navigate to the App Types page.

Select the Shared Configuration service.
Navigate to Security > AI & ML > App Types.

Figure: Navigate to App Type Configuration

Step 2: Configure app type object settings.

Select + Add App Type and enter the configuration in the app type object creation form using the following guidelines:

Figure: App Type Feature Configuration

Enter Name for the app type. This is the value for the app type label to be assigned to the load balancers for which the API discovery needs to be enabled.
Select + Add item button in Application Type Features section.
Select Malicious User Detection - Enable User Behavior Analysis for the AI/ML Feature Type field.
Optionally, select Enable learning from redirect traffic in the Business Logic Markup Setting section. This enables the AI engine to learn the endpoints from redirected traffic.
Select Save and Exit button to complete creating the app type object.

Assign App Type Label to Load Balancers

After creating the app type, it is required to assign the app type label to the load balancers for which you want to enable UBA detection.

Note: Enabling UBA detection for all load balancers in a namespace requires you to apply the app type label to all load balancers in that namespace.

Perform the following to assign the app type label to your load balancers.

Step 1: Navigate to load balancer management.

Select the Multi-Cloud App Connect service.
Select the desired namespace from the Namespace drop-down menu.
Navigate to Manage > Load Balancers > HTTP Load Balancers.
Select ...>Manage Configuration for the load balancer for which the app type label needs to be assigned.
Select Edit Configuration in the upper right corner.

Figure: Navigate to load balancer Edit Configuration

Step 2: Assign the app type label.

Select Add label in Labels box.
Select ves.io/app_type for the Labels box.

Figure: App Type Label Selection

Type Name of the app type object created in the previous step, and select Assign a Custom Value to add the app type label.

Figure: App Type Label Addition

Select Save and Exit button to apply the label to the load balancer.

Note: The Distributed Cloud Services AI model learns from all namespaces where the load balancers or vK8s services are applied with the app type label. You can turn off learning from specific namespaces using the app settings object.

Create App Settings

After creating an app type with the UBA feature enabled, it is required to associate it with the metrics and sources for which the user behavior analysis is required. This is done by configuring the app settings object.

Perform the following to create the app settings object:

Step 1: Navigate to the App Settings page.

Select the Multi-Cloud App Connect service.
Select the desired namespace from the Namespace drop-down menu.
Navigate to Security > AI & ML > App Settings.
Select Add App setting for the load balancer for which the app type label needs to be assigned.

Figure: Navigate to load balancer Edit Configuration

Step 2: Enter basic configuration for the app setting object.

Enter a name for the app setting.
Go to the Application Type Feature Configuration section, and select Add item to configure an AppType.

Figure: App Setting Basic Configuration

In the AppType field, select the created app type object from the drop-down list.
Select + Add Item.

Figure: AppType Settings

Note: Optionally, select Configure for the Malicious User Detection field and select Disable learning from this namespace option for the displayed fields. With this, the Distributed Cloud Services AI engine does not include data from this namespace for user behavior analysis.

Step 3: Complete creating app settings object.

Select Save and Exit button to complete creation of app settings object.

Monitor User Behavior

You can monitor the user behavior for anomalies and also inspect alerts using the HTTP load balancer monitoring.

Perform the following to monitor user behavior:

Step 1: Navigate to the load balancer monitoring.

Select the Multi-Cloud App Connect service.
Select the desired namespace from the Namespace drop-down menu.
Select Manage > Virtual Hosts > HTTP Load Balancers.
Hover over your load balancer from the displayed list, and select Security Monitoring under the load balancer name. Or select your load balancer from the displayed list to load its Performance Monitoring view, and then use the pulldown to change to the Security Monitoring view.

Step 2: Load Security Events view.

The Dashboard is loaded by default. Select the Malicious Users tab to inspect malicious user events. The graph shows a timeline over of malicious activity for the time period specified. Below the graph is a timeline of suspicious and malicious activity.