From load balancing to full-spectrum security: The evolution of HAProxy

This keynote explores how HAProxy has evolved over 25 years from a foundational load balancer into a comprehensive security platform. The presentation examines the synergy between HAProxy's data plane and HAProxy Fusion control plane, demonstrating how this unified architecture addresses modern threats including AI-powered bots and sophisticated protocol exploits.

What you'll learn:

• HAProxy's five core design principles: reliability, performance, observability, flexibility, and security.
• Recent technical advancements: NUMA-aware threading and protocol glitch mitigation for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.
• HAProxy Enterprise security modules: WAF capabilities, bot management with new Threat Detection Engine, and rate limiting at scale.
• HAProxy Fusion orchestration via Security Profiles, Threat Response Matrix, and centralized policy management across bare metal, Kubernetes, and multi-cloud environments.

Future roadmap items include OpenTelemetry support, AI gateway solutions, and enhanced client fingerprinting capabilities.