Case Study: U.S. Government Agency achieves secure cloud-based email with on-premises authentication using F5 Networks BIG‑IP

Government Agency Successfully Secures Cloud-Based Email Solution Using F5

U.S. Government Agency, a federal organization with about 1,500 employees across headquarters and regional offices, faced a Cloud First mandate to move from an expensive, hard‑to‑manage on‑premises Microsoft Exchange system to a cloud messaging solution. The agency selected Google’s Gmail but needed to retain user authentication and provisioning on‑premises; having previously used F5 Networks BIG‑IP solutions to manage traffic across two data centers, they turned to F5 Networks to meet this security and operational requirement.

F5 Networks implemented its BIG‑IP suite (including BIG‑IP LTM, GTM and BIG‑IP DNS) to provide on‑premises authentication for the cloud Gmail deployment and other outward‑facing systems, using web services and scripts to present an authentication window and pass credentials to Google. The solution enabled a secure transition for roughly 1,500 users, reduced administrative overhead and costs associated with the legacy messaging system, increased data transparency via BIG‑IP logging, and was expanded to handle authentication for all outward‑facing applications—positioning the agency to move additional services to the cloud.

U.S. Government Agency